A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Strategy & Execution
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint
As customer participation in business transactions increases, it is important to investigate how consumers approach financial transactions with firms in terms of selfishness and fairness. Pay-what-you-wish pricing models continue to attract managerial and academic interest as allowing customers to set prices provides an unorthodox setting in which to examine forces that drive buyer-seller interactions. This Executive Digest provides an overview of the current state of pay-what-you-wish (PWYW) pricing and the benefits it can provide to a firm.
Swot Analysis of "A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint" written by Christopher Groening, Paul Mills includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Pay Pricing facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Pricing and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint casestudy better are - – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing energy prices, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing commodity prices, there is backlash against globalization, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Pay Pricing, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Pay Pricing operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Pay Pricing
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Strategy & Execution field.
4. Making a Strategy & Execution topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Pay Pricing
Strengths A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Pay Pricing in A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint Harvard Business Review case study are -
Analytics focus
– Pay Pricing is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by Christopher Groening, Paul Mills can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Pay Pricing has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Pay Pricing has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Training and development
– Pay Pricing has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Pay Pricing are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Ability to lead change in Strategy & Execution field
– Pay Pricing is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Pay Pricing in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Learning organization
- Pay Pricing is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Pay Pricing is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management
– Pay Pricing is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Pay Pricing has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Pay Pricing in the sector have low bargaining power. A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Pay Pricing to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Diverse revenue streams
– Pay Pricing is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint case study a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Innovation driven organization
– Pay Pricing is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Strategy & Execution industry
– A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Pay Pricing to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Pay Pricing to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Weaknesses A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Pay Pricing products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Pay Pricing needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Pay Pricing is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Strategy & Execution segment. Pay Pricing needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Pay Pricing to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Need for greater diversity
– Pay Pricing has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Christopher Groening, Paul Mills suggests that, Pay Pricing is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Pay Pricing is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint HBR case study mentions - Pay Pricing takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Strategy & Execution strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Pay Pricing has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Pay Pricing has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Pay Pricing has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Pay Pricing has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Opportunities A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint are -
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Pay Pricing can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Strategy & Execution segment.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Pay Pricing can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Pay Pricing to increase its market reach. Pay Pricing will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Pay Pricing can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help, as suggested in case study, A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Loyalty marketing
– Pay Pricing has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Pay Pricing in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Strategy & Execution segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Pay Pricing has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Pay Pricing to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint case study. Pay Pricing can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Manufacturing automation
– Pay Pricing can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Strategy & Execution segment. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Strategy & Execution industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Pay Pricing can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Pay Pricing can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Developing new processes and practices
– Pay Pricing can develop new processes and procedures in Strategy & Execution industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Pay Pricing is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint case study suggests that firm can utilize new technology to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Pay Pricing can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Pay Pricing can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Threats A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Pay Pricing can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint .
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Pay Pricing business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Pay Pricing with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Pay Pricing in the Strategy & Execution sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Regulatory challenges
– Pay Pricing needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Strategy & Execution industry regulations.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Pay Pricing can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Strategy & Execution field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Pay Pricing can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Pay Pricing.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Pay Pricing is facing in Strategy & Execution sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Pay Pricing in the Strategy & Execution industry. The Strategy & Execution industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint, Pay Pricing may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Strategy & Execution .
Weighted SWOT Analysis of A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of A Guide to Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing from the Consumer's Viewpoint is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Pay Pricing needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
