Case Study Description of Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A)
By the spring of 2014, the founder of EarthWear Face & Body is in desperate need of part-time employees to help run her successful skin care retail business, which she runs out of her home in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. After eight years of hard work, she has turned her part-time hobby making all-natural skin care products into a thriving business. She sells her products online, through retail stores, at craft and trade shows and at the Saskatoon Farmers' Market. But her successful business has become too much work for her to manage on her own. A failed attempt to bring on a part-time employee made it clear that she needs to develop a targeted recruitment strategy. How can she effectively communicate her corporate culture to attract the best candidates?
Swot Analysis of "Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A)" written by Mary Weil, Julia Cutt includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Earthwear Skin facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Entrepreneurship, Human resource management and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) casestudy better are - – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing commodity prices, geopolitical disruptions, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Earthwear Skin, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Earthwear Skin 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 Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Earthwear Skin
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 Earthwear Skin
Strengths Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Earthwear Skin in Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Strong track record of project management
– Earthwear Skin is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Training and development
– Earthwear Skin has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Earthwear Skin 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Earthwear Skin 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 Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Earthwear Skin has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Earthwear Skin 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Earthwear Skin is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Diverse revenue streams
– Earthwear Skin is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) 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 Leadership & Managing People segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Earthwear Skin digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Earthwear Skin 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.
Learning organization
- Earthwear Skin 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 Earthwear Skin is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Earthwear Skin 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 Earthwear Skin
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Earthwear Skin does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) are -
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A), is just above the industry average. Earthwear Skin needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Earthwear Skin 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Mary Weil, Julia Cutt suggests that, Earthwear Skin 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Earthwear Skin is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Leadership & Managing People segment. Earthwear Skin needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Earthwear Skin to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A), it seems that the employees of Earthwear Skin 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Earthwear Skin is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) HBR case study mentions - Earthwear Skin 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 Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) 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 Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Earthwear Skin is planning to shift buying processes online.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) 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 Earthwear Skin 's lucrative 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 Earthwear Skin supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A), it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Earthwear Skin vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Earthwear Skin 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.
Opportunities Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) | 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 Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Earthwear Skin 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 Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Earthwear Skin to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Earthwear Skin 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Earthwear Skin can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Earthwear Skin 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, Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A), to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Earthwear Skin 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Earthwear Skin can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Earthwear Skin operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Leadership & Managing People industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Earthwear Skin 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 Earthwear Skin in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Leadership & Managing People segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Earthwear Skin 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.
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 Earthwear Skin in the consumer business. Now Earthwear Skin can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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. Earthwear Skin can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Earthwear Skin to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Manufacturing automation
– Earthwear Skin can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Leadership & Managing People 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 Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) are -
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Earthwear Skin 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Earthwear Skin can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Earthwear Skin needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Earthwear Skin in the Leadership & Managing People sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Earthwear Skin is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Earthwear Skin.
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. Earthwear Skin 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Earthwear Skin 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Earthwear Skin has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Earthwear Skin 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
– Earthwear Skin 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. Earthwear Skin can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Earthwear Skin 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 Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) .
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Leadership & Managing People field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Earthwear Skin can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) 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 Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) 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 Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) 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 Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) 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 Earthwear Face & Body: Communicating Corporate Culture (A) 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 Earthwear Skin needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
