Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band
The three founding members of The Mammals--Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, Ruth Ungar, and Mike Merenda--were facing a major decision. In the year just ending, the string band specializing in folk rock music had played over 160 concerts, earning approximately $100,000 in gross revenues but leaving little time to write or prepare new music. Signature Sounds Records had offered the group a recording contract. They needed to decide whether to accept the record deal and leverage Signature Sounds' financial and marketing resources or to remain independent. Would the record label want them to tone down their sometimes-controversial songs and compromise their artistic values? They also had questions as to the role of their two backup musicians, Mike's brother and a childhood friend. Should they join The Mammals on a permanent basis? The case presents information on the music industry in general and the folk segment in particular.
Authors :: Michael J. Merenda, William Naumes, Margaret J. Naumes
Swot Analysis of "Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band" written by Michael J. Merenda, William Naumes, Margaret J. Naumes includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Mammals Music facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Entrepreneurship, IT, Leading teams, Risk management and Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band casestudy better are - – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing energy prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, wage bills are increasing, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, geopolitical disruptions, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Mammals Music, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Mammals Music 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 Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Mammals Music
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 Mammals Music
Strengths Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Mammals Music in Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band Harvard Business Review case study are -
Organizational Resilience of Mammals Music
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Mammals Music does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Analytics focus
– Mammals Music 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 Michael J. Merenda, William Naumes, Margaret J. Naumes 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Mammals Music 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 Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Mammals Music in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Mammals Music has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band 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
- Mammals Music 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 Mammals Music is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– Mammals Music is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Mammals Music 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 Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band 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
– Mammals Music is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Ability to lead change in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field
– Mammals Music 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 Mammals Music 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 Mammals Music 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 Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Mammals Music is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment. Mammals Music needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Mammals Music to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Mammals Music, firm in the HBR case study Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Mammals Music 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Michael J. Merenda, William Naumes, Margaret J. Naumes suggests that, Mammals Music 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Mammals Music 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. Mammals Music 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band HBR case study mentions - Mammals Music 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
– Mammals Music 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Mammals Music products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Mammals Music needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Mammals Music 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band 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 Mammals Music 's lucrative customers.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band, it seems that the employees of Mammals Music 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.
Opportunities Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band | 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 Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band 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 Mammals Music in the consumer business. Now Mammals Music can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Mammals Music 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Mammals Music can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Mammals Music is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Mammals Music 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.
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. Mammals Music 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. Mammals Music 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Mammals Music 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 Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Mammals Music to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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. Mammals Music can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Mammals Music to increase its market reach. Mammals Music 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Mammals Music 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. Mammals Music can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Mammals Music 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Mammals Music 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.
Threats Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Mammals Music 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.
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 Mammals Music in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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. Mammals Music 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 Mammals Music 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
– Mammals Music 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.
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. Mammals Music 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 Mammals Music is facing in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 dependence on third party suppliers
– Mammals Music 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Mammals Music with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Mammals Music can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Mammals Music.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band 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 Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band 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 Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band 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 Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band 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 Humble Abode Music and The Mammals: Not Your Grandpa's String Band 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 Mammals Music needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
