Swot Analysis of "Submarino.com (B)" written by Lynda M. Applegate, Luiz Felipe Monteiro includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Submarino.com Supplements facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Submarino.com (B) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Entrepreneurship, International business, Internet, Leadership, Organizational culture and Global Business.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Submarino.com (B) casestudy better are - – increasing commodity prices, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing energy prices, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, wage bills are increasing, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Submarino.com (B)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Submarino.com (B) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Submarino.com Supplements, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Submarino.com Supplements 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 Submarino.com (B) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Submarino.com (B) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Submarino.com Supplements
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Global Business field.
4. Making a Global Business topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Submarino.com Supplements
Strengths Submarino.com (B) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Submarino.com Supplements in Submarino.com (B) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Submarino.com Supplements is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Submarino.com (B) 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Submarino.com Supplements is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Submarino.com (B) are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Submarino.com Supplements 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 Submarino.com (B) HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Global Business industry
– Submarino.com (B) firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Submarino.com Supplements to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Global Business industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Submarino.com Supplements to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– Submarino.com Supplements is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Submarino.com (B) Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Training and development
– Submarino.com Supplements has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Submarino.com (B) 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.
Learning organization
- Submarino.com Supplements 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 Submarino.com Supplements is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Submarino.com (B) Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Submarino.com Supplements
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Submarino.com Supplements does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Submarino.com Supplements in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Analytics focus
– Submarino.com Supplements 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 Lynda M. Applegate, Luiz Felipe Monteiro 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Submarino.com Supplements in the sector have low bargaining power. Submarino.com (B) has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Submarino.com Supplements to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Submarino.com Supplements 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.
Weaknesses Submarino.com (B) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Submarino.com (B) are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Submarino.com Supplements 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Submarino.com (B) HBR case study mentions - Submarino.com Supplements 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Submarino.com (B), it seems that the employees of Submarino.com Supplements 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Submarino.com (B), in the dynamic environment Submarino.com Supplements has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Submarino.com Supplements has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Submarino.com Supplements 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Submarino.com (B), is just above the industry average. Submarino.com Supplements 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Submarino.com Supplements is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Submarino.com (B) can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
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 Submarino.com Supplements supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Submarino.com (B), it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Submarino.com Supplements vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Submarino.com (B) 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 Submarino.com Supplements 's lucrative customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Submarino.com (B) 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 Submarino.com (B) can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Submarino.com Supplements is planning to shift buying processes online.
Need for greater diversity
– Submarino.com Supplements 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 Submarino.com (B) | 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 Submarino.com (B) are -
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 Submarino.com Supplements in the consumer business. Now Submarino.com Supplements can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Submarino.com Supplements 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Submarino.com Supplements 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 Submarino.com Supplements to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Buying journey improvements
– Submarino.com Supplements can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Submarino.com (B) 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Submarino.com Supplements to increase its market reach. Submarino.com Supplements 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.
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 Submarino.com Supplements 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Submarino.com Supplements 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, Submarino.com (B), to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Submarino.com Supplements can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Submarino.com Supplements 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.
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. Submarino.com Supplements can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Submarino.com Supplements is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Submarino.com (B) 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Submarino.com Supplements 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Submarino.com Supplements 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 Global Business segment.
Threats Submarino.com (B) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Submarino.com (B) are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Submarino.com (B), Submarino.com Supplements may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Global Business .
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Submarino.com Supplements is facing in Global Business sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Submarino.com Supplements with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Submarino.com Supplements 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 Submarino.com Supplements in the Global Business sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Submarino.com Supplements has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Global Business industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Submarino.com Supplements needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Global Business 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Global Business field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Submarino.com Supplements can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Submarino.com Supplements in the Global Business industry. The Global Business 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.
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.
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. Submarino.com Supplements needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Global Business industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Submarino.com Supplements 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.
Increasing wage structure of Submarino.com Supplements
– 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 Submarino.com Supplements.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Submarino.com (B) 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 Submarino.com (B) 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 Submarino.com (B) 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 Submarino.com (B) 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 Submarino.com (B) 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 Submarino.com Supplements needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
