Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
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
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 - – increasing commodity prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing transportation and logistics costs, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, wage bills are increasing,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, technology disruption, etc
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 switching costs
– The high switching costs that Downtown Earth's 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Downtown Earth's 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.
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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Leadership & Managing People industry
– Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Downtown Earth's to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Downtown Earth's to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Downtown Earth's is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Downtown Earth's in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
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 -
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.
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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing, it seems that the employees of Downtown Earth's don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Ashton Paulitsch, Maninder Pardais, Bernard Streeper, Brian Ballman suggests that, Downtown Earth's 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing 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 Downtown Earth's has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Downtown Earth's is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Leadership & Managing People segment. Downtown Earth's needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Downtown Earth's to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Downtown Earth's 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.
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 -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Downtown Earth's 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, Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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.
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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Downtown Earth's has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Downtown Earth's to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing case study. Downtown Earth's can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Downtown Earth's can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Downtown Earth's 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 Leadership & Managing People segment.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Leadership & Managing People industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Downtown Earth's can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Downtown Earth's is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing 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.
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.
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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Downtown Earth's has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Downtown Earth's to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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 -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Downtown Earth's demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Leadership & Managing People field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Downtown Earth's can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Downtown Earth's in the Leadership & Managing People sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Downtown Earth's 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 Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing .
Increasing wage structure of Downtown Earth's
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Downtown Earth's.
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.
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.
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 .
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.
Feel free to connect with us if you need business research.
You can download Excel Template of Case Study Solution & Analysis of Earth's General Store: Balancing People, Planet, and Profit in Organic-Food Retailing
