Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes
Today's retailers need to adopt a data-driven view -with the goal of understanding how website features and advances in AI will affect consumer behavior.
Authors :: Prabuddha De, Yu Jeffrey Hu, Mohammad S. Rahman
Swot Analysis of "Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes" written by Prabuddha De, Yu Jeffrey Hu, Mohammad S. Rahman includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Ai Mistakes facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes casestudy better are - – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing energy prices, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, wage bills are increasing, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Ai Mistakes, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Ai Mistakes 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 Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Ai Mistakes
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Sales & Marketing field.
4. Making a Sales & Marketing topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Ai Mistakes
Strengths Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Ai Mistakes in Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes Harvard Business Review case study are -
Training and development
– Ai Mistakes has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes 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 Ai Mistakes in the sector have low bargaining power. Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Ai Mistakes to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Innovation driven organization
– Ai Mistakes is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Ai Mistakes 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 Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High brand equity
– Ai Mistakes has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Ai Mistakes to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes 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.
Organizational Resilience of Ai Mistakes
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Ai Mistakes does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Digital Transformation in Sales & Marketing segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Ai Mistakes digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Ai Mistakes has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Ai Mistakes 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 Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Learning organization
- Ai Mistakes 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 Ai Mistakes is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Analytics focus
– Ai Mistakes 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 Prabuddha De, Yu Jeffrey Hu, Mohammad S. Rahman 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Ai Mistakes 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.
Weaknesses Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes are -
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Ai Mistakes supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Ai Mistakes vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes HBR case study mentions - Ai Mistakes 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Ai Mistakes 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Ai Mistakes is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes, it seems that the employees of Ai Mistakes 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Ai Mistakes has some of the most successful products in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. firm in the HBR case study - Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Sales & Marketing 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Ai Mistakes 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 cash cycle compare to competitors
Ai Mistakes 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Ai Mistakes 's lucrative customers.
Lack of clear differentiation of Ai Mistakes products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Ai Mistakes needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Opportunities Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes | 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 Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes are -
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Sales & Marketing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Ai Mistakes 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. Ai Mistakes 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, Ai Mistakes 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Ai Mistakes 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, Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes, 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
– Ai Mistakes 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.
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 Ai Mistakes in the consumer business. Now Ai Mistakes can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Ai Mistakes 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 Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Ai Mistakes to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Manufacturing automation
– Ai Mistakes can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Sales & Marketing 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Ai Mistakes can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Ai Mistakes is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes 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.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Ai Mistakes to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Ai Mistakes 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 Ai Mistakes to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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. Ai Mistakes can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Ai Mistakes 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.
Threats Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Ai Mistakes 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 Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes .
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Ai Mistakes has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Ai Mistakes needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Sales & Marketing sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Regulatory challenges
– Ai Mistakes 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 Sales & Marketing industry regulations.
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. Ai Mistakes 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.
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 Ai Mistakes.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes, Ai Mistakes may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Sales & Marketing .
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Sales & Marketing field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Ai Mistakes can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing wage structure of Ai Mistakes
– 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 Ai Mistakes.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Ai Mistakes 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 Ai Mistakes is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Ai Mistakes 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.
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 Ai Mistakes in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes 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 Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes 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 Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes 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 Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes 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 Avoid These Five Digital Retailing Mistakes 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 Ai Mistakes needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
