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Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution

Case Study Description of Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing


The owner and operator of two stores that sold organic groceries and fair-trade goods in Edmonton, Alberta was proud of what he had built; however he was worried about the financial sustainability of his downtown location. Since its opening in 2014, the downtown store had constantly struggled to remain profitable in the face of extremely high overhead costs. The original Whyte Avenue location of Earth's General Store, highly popular with its loyal patrons, had been subsidizing the downtown store just to keep its doors open. This practice was certainly not a long-term solution, and in early 2016, the owner needed to create a new business strategy that would balance his company's financial needs with its social and environmental missions. The authors Ashton Paulitsch, Maninder Pardais, Bernard Streeper, Brian Ballman, Taylor Love, and Joel Gehman are affiliated with University of Alberta.

Authors :: Ashton Paulitsch, Maninder Pardais, Bernard Streeper, Brian Ballman

Topics :: Leadership & Managing People

Tags :: Sustainability, SWOT Analysis, SWOT Matrix, TOWS, Weighted SWOT Analysis

Swot Analysis of "Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing" written by Ashton Paulitsch, Maninder Pardais, Bernard Streeper, Brian Ballman includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Downtown Earth's facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Sustainability and Leadership & Managing People.


Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing casestudy better are - – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is backlash against globalization, increasing commodity prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc



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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing


SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Downtown Earth's, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Downtown Earth's 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 Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Downtown Earth's
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Downtown Earth's




Strengths Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Downtown Earth's in Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing Harvard Business Review case study are -

Innovation driven organization

– Downtown Earth's is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.

Learning organization

- Downtown Earth's 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 Downtown Earth's is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Ability to lead change in Leadership & Managing People field

– Downtown Earth's 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 Downtown Earth's in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.

Training and development

– Downtown Earth's has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing 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.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

– Suppliers of Downtown Earth's in the sector have low bargaining power. Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Downtown Earth's to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy in the Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.

Diverse revenue streams

– Downtown Earth's is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing 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.

Organizational Resilience of Downtown Earth's

– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Downtown Earth's does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.

Strong track record of project management

– Downtown Earth's is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.

Highly skilled collaborators

– Downtown Earth's has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

– Downtown Earth's has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.

High brand equity

– Downtown Earth's has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Downtown Earth's to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.






Weaknesses Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing are -

No frontier risks strategy

– After analyzing the HBR case study Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Leadership & Managing People 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.

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Downtown Earth's needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.

Lack of clear differentiation of Downtown Earth's products

– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Downtown Earth's needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.

Ability to respond to the competition

– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing, in the dynamic environment Downtown Earth's has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Downtown Earth's has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.

Interest costs

– Compare to the competition, Downtown Earth's has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.

Slow decision making process

– As mentioned earlier in the report, Downtown Earth's has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Downtown Earth's even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.

Slow to strategic competitive environment developments

– As Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing HBR case study mentions - Downtown Earth's 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.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing, is just above the industry average. Downtown Earth's needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.

Aligning sales with marketing

– It come across in the case study Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Downtown Earth's is planning to shift buying processes online.

Low market penetration in new markets

– Outside its home market of Downtown Earth's, firm in the HBR case study Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.

Need for greater diversity

– Downtown Earth's 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.




Opportunities Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing | 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 Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing are -

Buying journey improvements

– Downtown Earth's can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing suggest that firm can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.

Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions

– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Downtown Earth's in the consumer business. Now Downtown Earth's can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.

Manufacturing automation

– Downtown Earth's can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Leadership & Managing People 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.

Increase in government spending

– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Downtown Earth's can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Downtown Earth's operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Downtown Earth's to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.

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. Downtown Earth's can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

Developing new processes and practices

– Downtown Earth's can develop new processes and procedures in Leadership & Managing People 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.

Loyalty marketing

– Downtown Earth's 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.

Leveraging digital technologies

– Downtown Earth's can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Downtown Earth's to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Downtown Earth's to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

Lowering marketing communication costs

– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Downtown Earth's in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Leadership & Managing People segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– Consumer behavior has changed in the Leadership & Managing People industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Downtown Earth's 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. Downtown Earth's 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.

Low interest rates

– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Downtown Earth's 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 Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis


The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing are -

High level of anxiety and lack of motivation

– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Downtown Earth's needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

Barriers of entry lowering

– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Downtown Earth's with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Downtown Earth's is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, 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.

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 Downtown Earth's.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Downtown Earth's 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.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Downtown Earth's high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.

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 Downtown Earth's business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, 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.

Environmental challenges

– Downtown Earth's needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Downtown Earth's can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.

Regulatory challenges

– Downtown Earth's 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 Leadership & Managing People industry regulations.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing, Downtown Earth's may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Leadership & Managing People .

Instability in the European markets

– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Downtown Earth's will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.




Weighted SWOT Analysis of Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing 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 Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing 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 Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing 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 Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing 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 Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing 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 Downtown Earth's needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.



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