Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket
Vendedy was the world's first mobile network connecting global travellers to local street markets. Inspired by the emergence of the sharing economy, Vendedy's founder and chief executive officer had always been passionate about uniting social and economic empowerment with entrepreneurial development. A complex platform linking street vendors in some of the world's poorest countries to travellers seeking authentic tourism experiences and souvenirs, Vendedy's founder faced numerous challenges. Where should the venture's focus be? How quickly should she try to roll out the platform, and across how many countries? How was she going to recruit a full-time team for Vendedy? Could the company succeed in transforming how global travellers accessed the products and stories of street vendors around the world? Yusaf Akbar is affiliated with Central European University.
Swot Analysis of "Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket" written by Yusaf Akbar, Christine Souffrant includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Vendedy Travellers facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Entrepreneurship, Strategy and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket casestudy better are - – increasing commodity prices, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing energy prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, geopolitical disruptions,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Vendedy Travellers, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Vendedy Travellers 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 Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Vendedy Travellers
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Vendedy Travellers
Strengths Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Vendedy Travellers in Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket Harvard Business Review case study are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Vendedy Travellers 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 Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Vendedy Travellers 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.
Ability to lead change in Leadership & Managing People field
– Vendedy Travellers 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 Vendedy Travellers in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Vendedy Travellers has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Strong track record of project management
– Vendedy Travellers 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
– Vendedy Travellers has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Vendedy Travellers to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Vendedy Travellers is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Vendedy Travellers is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Leadership & Managing People industry
– Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Vendedy Travellers to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Vendedy Travellers to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Vendedy Travellers has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Vendedy Travellers 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Vendedy Travellers is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Weaknesses Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket are -
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Vendedy Travellers 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Vendedy Travellers 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 - Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket 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 Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Vendedy Travellers is planning to shift buying processes online.
Need for greater diversity
– Vendedy Travellers 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket 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 Vendedy Travellers has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket 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 Vendedy Travellers 's lucrative customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket HBR case study mentions - Vendedy Travellers 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Vendedy Travellers 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket, it seems that the employees of Vendedy Travellers 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Vendedy Travellers products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Vendedy Travellers needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Vendedy Travellers, firm in the HBR case study Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Opportunities Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket | 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 Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Vendedy Travellers can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Vendedy Travellers 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 Vendedy Travellers to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Vendedy Travellers 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 Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Vendedy Travellers to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Developing new processes and practices
– Vendedy Travellers can develop new processes and procedures in Leadership & Managing People 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Vendedy Travellers 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Vendedy Travellers 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, Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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 Vendedy Travellers in the consumer business. Now Vendedy Travellers can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Vendedy Travellers 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 Leadership & Managing People segment.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Vendedy Travellers can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Vendedy Travellers operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
Loyalty marketing
– Vendedy Travellers 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.
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. Vendedy Travellers can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Vendedy Travellers 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Vendedy Travellers has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Vendedy Travellers to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket case study. Vendedy Travellers can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket are -
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Vendedy Travellers 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.
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 Vendedy Travellers.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Vendedy Travellers has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Vendedy Travellers needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Leadership & Managing People 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.
Environmental challenges
– Vendedy Travellers 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. Vendedy Travellers can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.
Regulatory challenges
– Vendedy Travellers 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 Leadership & Managing People industry regulations.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Vendedy Travellers in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The Leadership & Managing People 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Vendedy Travellers 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 Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket .
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Vendedy Travellers is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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. Vendedy Travellers 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Vendedy Travellers 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.
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.
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 Vendedy Travellers business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket 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 Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket 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 Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket 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 Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket 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 Vendedy: The World's Street Markets in Your Pocket 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 Vendedy Travellers needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
