Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Finance & Accounting
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry
Onion prices have been particularly volatile in India, reaching an all-time high of Rs. 100 in the month of October 2013 in certain parts of the country. The core of the onion price problem appears to stem from massive hoarding by cartels of intermediaries. How can this be stopped? Are there deeper problems with India's agricultural policies that belie the onion market failures? Onion is an important commodity for Indians of all classes; it is also the one that has swung political fortunes in India. The state of affairs in the onion market is indicative of gaping policy holes in the Indian agricultural markets. As India gears for the national elections in 2014, there is heightened interest in policy manifestos of the competing political parties. A history of policy measures adopted by past governments of India and the effects of these measures are outlined in this case. The case provides a platform for students to discuss the appropriateness of various policy measures with respect to agricultural produce marketing in India.
Swot Analysis of "Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry" written by Sreelata Jonnalagedda includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Onion India facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Pricing and Finance & Accounting.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry casestudy better are - – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing energy prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing commodity prices, increasing transportation and logistics costs,
technology disruption, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Onion India, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Onion India 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Onion India
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Finance & Accounting field.
4. Making a Finance & Accounting topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Onion India
Strengths Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Onion India in Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry Harvard Business Review case study are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Onion India 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Onion India is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Onion India has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Onion India 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.
Analytics focus
– Onion India 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 Sreelata Jonnalagedda 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.
Organizational Resilience of Onion India
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Onion India does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Onion India 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Onion India in the sector have low bargaining power. Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Onion India to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Diverse revenue streams
– Onion India is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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.
Learning organization
- Onion India 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 Onion India is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Finance & Accounting field
– Onion India 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 Onion India in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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.
Training and development
– Onion India has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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.
Weaknesses Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry are -
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Onion India, firm in the HBR case study Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Onion India 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry HBR case study mentions - Onion India 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 Onion India 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, Onion India is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Need for greater diversity
– Onion India 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Onion India is planning to shift buying processes online.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Onion India 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 - Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Lack of clear differentiation of Onion India products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Onion India needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Onion India 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry, in the dynamic environment Onion India has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Onion India has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Opportunities Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry | 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Onion India 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, Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Onion India 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 Finance & Accounting segment.
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. Onion India can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Onion India 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 Onion India to increase its market reach. Onion India 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Finance & Accounting industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Onion India 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. Onion India 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, Onion India 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Onion India has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Onion India to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry case study. Onion India can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Manufacturing automation
– Onion India can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Finance & Accounting 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Onion India 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 Onion India 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 Onion India to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Developing new processes and practices
– Onion India can develop new processes and procedures in Finance & Accounting 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Onion India in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Finance & Accounting segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Threats Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry are -
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 Onion India in the Finance & Accounting sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Onion India 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Onion India 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry, Onion India may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Finance & Accounting .
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Onion India in the Finance & Accounting industry. The Finance & Accounting 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Onion India 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry .
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. Onion India 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.
Increasing wage structure of Onion India
– 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 Onion India.
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 Onion India 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Onion India is facing in Finance & Accounting sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Onion India.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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 Onion India needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
