How Government Shaped the American Diet SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Global Business
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of How Government Shaped the American Diet
American eating habits have changed over time. Reviews those changes, the role of government policy in affecting those changes, and the health consequences of obesity.
Authors :: David E. Bell, Stacey J. Bell, George L. Blackburn M.D.
Swot Analysis of "How Government Shaped the American Diet" written by David E. Bell, Stacey J. Bell, George L. Blackburn M.D. includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Eating Diet facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in How Government Shaped the American Diet case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Policy and Global Business.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the How Government Shaped the American Diet casestudy better are - – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is backlash against globalization, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , geopolitical disruptions, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of How Government Shaped the American Diet
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in How Government Shaped the American Diet case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Eating Diet, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Eating Diet 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 How Government Shaped the American Diet can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in How Government Shaped the American Diet case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Eating Diet
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 Eating Diet
Strengths How Government Shaped the American Diet | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Eating Diet in How Government Shaped the American Diet Harvard Business Review case study are -
Digital Transformation in Global Business segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Eating Diet digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Eating Diet 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Global Business industry
– How Government Shaped the American Diet firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Eating Diet to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Global Business industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Eating Diet to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Eating Diet
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Eating Diet does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Diverse revenue streams
– Eating Diet is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in How Government Shaped the American Diet 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
– Eating Diet is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the How Government Shaped the American Diet are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Eating Diet 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the How Government Shaped the American Diet 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Eating Diet is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Analytics focus
– Eating Diet 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 David E. Bell, Stacey J. Bell, George L. Blackburn M.D. 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.
Ability to lead change in Global Business field
– Eating Diet 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 Eating Diet in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Eating Diet 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 Eating Diet in the sector have low bargaining power. How Government Shaped the American Diet has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Eating Diet to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses How Government Shaped the American Diet | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of How Government Shaped the American Diet are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Eating Diet is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study How Government Shaped the American Diet can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As How Government Shaped the American Diet HBR case study mentions - Eating Diet 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
– Eating Diet 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 How Government Shaped the American Diet 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 How Government Shaped the American Diet can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Eating Diet is planning to shift buying processes online.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study How Government Shaped the American Diet, is just above the industry average. Eating Diet 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Eating Diet 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Eating Diet 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 - How Government Shaped the American Diet should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study How Government Shaped the American Diet, in the dynamic environment Eating Diet has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Eating Diet 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 Eating Diet, firm in the HBR case study How Government Shaped the American Diet needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the How Government Shaped the American Diet 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 Eating Diet has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Eating Diet has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Opportunities How Government Shaped the American Diet | 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 How Government Shaped the American Diet are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Eating Diet 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 Eating Diet to increase its market reach. Eating Diet 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 Global Business industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Eating Diet 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. Eating Diet 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Eating Diet 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Eating Diet can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Global Business 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Global Business industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Eating Diet can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Eating Diet 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, How Government Shaped the American Diet, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Eating Diet 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 Eating Diet has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Eating Diet to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the How Government Shaped the American Diet case study. Eating Diet can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Eating Diet can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. How Government Shaped the American Diet 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Eating Diet 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 Eating Diet in the consumer business. Now Eating Diet can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Eating Diet 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 How Government Shaped the American Diet External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study How Government Shaped the American Diet are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Eating Diet has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Global Business industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Eating Diet 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.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study How Government Shaped the American Diet, Eating Diet 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 .
Regulatory challenges
– Eating Diet 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 Global Business industry regulations.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Eating Diet is facing in Global Business sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Eating Diet 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 How Government Shaped the American Diet .
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Eating Diet can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
High 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. Eating Diet needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Global Business industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing wage structure of Eating Diet
– 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 Eating Diet.
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. Eating Diet 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Eating Diet 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.
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. Eating Diet can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Eating Diet business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of How Government Shaped the American Diet 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 How Government Shaped the American Diet 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 How Government Shaped the American Diet 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 How Government Shaped the American Diet 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 How Government Shaped the American Diet 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 Eating Diet needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.