Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product
Doug Mason wished to create a new product that would cater to the interests of a new age generation, and he chose the development of a beverage that would have a healthy lifestyle image. His entrepreneurial start-up led to very rapid expansion and ultimately to sales in other countries. Clearly Canadian relies upon other companies to provide equipment for transportation and distribution, enabling it to operate with relatively few employees and a small base of physical capital. The case poses an interesting question, "Is the company a small service sector enterprise or a large manufacturing business?"
Swot Analysis of "Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product" written by David W. Conklin includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Beverage Age facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Entrepreneurship, Globalization, Strategic planning and Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product casestudy better are - – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , geopolitical disruptions,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, wage bills are increasing, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Beverage Age, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Beverage Age 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 Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Beverage Age
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field.
4. Making a Innovation & Entrepreneurship topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Beverage Age
Strengths Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Beverage Age in Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product Harvard Business Review case study are -
Ability to lead change in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field
– Beverage Age 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 Beverage Age in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Strong track record of project management
– Beverage Age is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High brand equity
– Beverage Age has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Beverage Age to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Analytics focus
– Beverage Age 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 W. Conklin 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 recruit top talent
– Beverage Age is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Diverse revenue streams
– Beverage Age is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Beverage Age 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.
Training and development
– Beverage Age has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Beverage Age 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 Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Beverage Age 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 Beverage Age is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Beverage Age has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Beverage Age 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Beverage Age 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 Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Beverage Age 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Beverage Age 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Beverage Age 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Beverage Age, firm in the HBR case study Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Beverage Age 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product, it seems that the employees of Beverage Age 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.
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 Beverage Age supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Beverage Age vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product 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 Beverage Age 's lucrative customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Beverage Age is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment. Beverage Age needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Beverage Age to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, David W. Conklin suggests that, Beverage Age is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Opportunities Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product | 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 Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product are -
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Beverage Age 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 Beverage Age to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Loyalty marketing
– Beverage Age 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Beverage Age 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Beverage Age in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Developing new processes and practices
– Beverage Age can develop new processes and procedures in Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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.
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. Beverage Age can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Beverage Age can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Beverage Age 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 Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Beverage Age 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Beverage Age 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 Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Beverage Age to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Beverage Age 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, Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product, 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 Beverage Age can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Manufacturing automation
– Beverage Age can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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.
Threats Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Beverage Age 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 dependence on third party suppliers
– Beverage Age 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.
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. Beverage Age needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Beverage Age has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Beverage Age needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Beverage Age 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Beverage Age 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 Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry regulations.
Increasing wage structure of Beverage Age
– 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 Beverage Age.
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. Beverage Age 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 Beverage Age.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Beverage Age is facing in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Beverage Age business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product, Beverage Age may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Innovation & Entrepreneurship .
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Beverage Age 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 Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product .
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product 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 Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product 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 Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product 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 Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product 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 Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp.: Creating a New New Age Product 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 Beverage Age needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
