AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name?
Three founders of an international Internet company (e-mail-based marketing) struggle with naming the company. As they prepare to invest more than $10 million of first-round venture funding in advertising and marketing, they search for a name that will have power and breadth, but will be simple and functional in many different Asian countries.
Swot Analysis of "AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name?" written by Myra M. Hart, Sharon I. Peyus includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Asiamail.com Naming facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Internet, Venture capital and Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? casestudy better are - – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, geopolitical disruptions, increasing energy prices, there is backlash against globalization, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name?
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Asiamail.com Naming, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Asiamail.com Naming 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 AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Asiamail.com Naming
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 Asiamail.com Naming
Strengths AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Asiamail.com Naming in AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? Harvard Business Review case study are -
Ability to lead change in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field
– Asiamail.com Naming 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 Asiamail.com Naming in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Diverse revenue streams
– Asiamail.com Naming is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? 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.
Training and development
– Asiamail.com Naming has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? 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.
Digital Transformation in Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Asiamail.com Naming digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Asiamail.com Naming 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Asiamail.com Naming 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.
Organizational Resilience of Asiamail.com Naming
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Asiamail.com Naming 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 Asiamail.com Naming in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Asiamail.com Naming 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Asiamail.com Naming 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 AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Asiamail.com Naming in the sector have low bargaining power. AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Asiamail.com Naming to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Asiamail.com Naming has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Asiamail.com Naming 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.
Weaknesses AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? are -
Need for greater diversity
– Asiamail.com Naming 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Asiamail.com Naming 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 decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Asiamail.com Naming has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Asiamail.com Naming even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name?, in the dynamic environment Asiamail.com Naming has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Asiamail.com Naming has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Asiamail.com Naming is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? 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 Asiamail.com Naming supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name?, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Asiamail.com Naming vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name?, is just above the industry average. Asiamail.com Naming 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 strategic competitive environment developments
– As AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? HBR case study mentions - Asiamail.com Naming 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? 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 AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Asiamail.com Naming is planning to shift buying processes online.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Asiamail.com Naming 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Asiamail.com Naming 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 - AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Opportunities AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? | 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 AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? are -
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. Asiamail.com Naming can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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 Asiamail.com Naming in the consumer business. Now Asiamail.com Naming can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Asiamail.com Naming 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Asiamail.com Naming 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Asiamail.com Naming 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. Asiamail.com Naming 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Asiamail.com Naming to increase its market reach. Asiamail.com Naming 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Asiamail.com Naming 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Asiamail.com Naming 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Asiamail.com Naming 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Asiamail.com Naming 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, AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name?, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Asiamail.com Naming can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Asiamail.com Naming operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector.
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. Asiamail.com Naming can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Asiamail.com Naming 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.
Threats AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Asiamail.com Naming 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Asiamail.com Naming in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. The Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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.
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 Asiamail.com Naming business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Asiamail.com Naming 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 AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? .
Environmental challenges
– Asiamail.com Naming needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Asiamail.com Naming can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry.
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 Asiamail.com Naming in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
Increasing wage structure of Asiamail.com Naming
– 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 Asiamail.com Naming.
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. Asiamail.com Naming needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Asiamail.com Naming is facing in Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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 Asiamail.com Naming with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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 Asiamail.com Naming.
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. Asiamail.com Naming 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? 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 AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? 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 AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? 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 AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? 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 AsiaMail.com: What's in a Name? 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 Asiamail.com Naming needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
