Gillette India (GILE) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Personal & Household Prods.
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Gillette India (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Gillette India is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, wage bills are increasing, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing commodity prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Gillette India can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Gillette India, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Gillette India 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 Gillette India can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Gillette India
2. Improving business portfolio management of Gillette India
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a Personal & Household Prods. sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Gillette India
Strengths of Gillette India | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Gillette India are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Gillette India is one of the leading players in the Personal & Household Prods. industry in India. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in India. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Gillette India 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.
Digital Transformation in Personal & Household Prods. industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Gillette India digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Gillette India 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Gillette India in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Gillette India has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Gillette India to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Gillette India comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Personal & Household Prods. 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.
Learning organization
- Gillette India 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 Gillette India is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Gillette India emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Gillette India has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Personal & Household Prods. industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Gillette India have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Gillette India 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Personal & Household Prods. industry
– Gillette India is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Innovation driven organization
– Gillette India is one of the most innovative firm in Personal & Household Prods. sector.
Ability to lead change in Personal & Household Prods.
– Gillette India is one of the leading players in the Personal & Household Prods. industry in India. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Personal & Household Prods. industry in India but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Gillette India in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Personal & Household Prods. industry
– Gillette India has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Gillette India to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Personal & Household Prods. industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Gillette India to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Weaknesses of Gillette India | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Gillette India are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Gillette India is one of the leading players in the Personal & Household Prods. industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Personal & Household Prods. industry in last five years.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Gillette India, in the dynamic environment of Personal & Household Prods. industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Gillette India has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Gillette India has some of the most successful models in the Personal & Household Prods. industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Gillette India should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Gillette India has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Personal & Household Prods. industry over the last five years. Gillette India 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Gillette India products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Gillette India needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Employees’ less understanding of Gillette India strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Gillette India 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, Gillette India is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Gillette India to provide better information regarding Personal & Household Prods. products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Gillette India needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Personal & Household Prods. industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Gillette India can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Gillette India is planning to shift buying processes online.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Gillette India is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Personal & Household Prods. industry, but Gillette India needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Gillette India to focus more on services in the Personal & Household Prods. industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Gillette India, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Personal & Household Prods. industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Gillette India has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Personal & Household Prods. industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Gillette India Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Gillette India are -
Developing new processes and practices
– Gillette India can develop new processes and procedures in Personal & Household Prods. 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Gillette India has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Personal & Household Prods. industry. This can help Gillette India to build a more holistic ecosystem for Gillette India products in the Personal & Household Prods. industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Gillette India 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 Personal & Household Prods. industry.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Gillette India 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 Personal & Household Prods. industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Gillette India 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. Gillette India 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Gillette India can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Gillette India operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Personal & Household Prods. sector.
Buying journey improvements
– Gillette India can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Personal & Household Prods. industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It 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.
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 Gillette India 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Gillette India can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Gillette India is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Gillette India can utilize new technology in the field of Personal & Household Prods. industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Gillette India 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 Gillette India to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Gillette India has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Personal & Household Prods. sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Gillette India to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Gillette India to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Gillette India 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 Gillette India External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Gillette India are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Gillette India is facing in Personal & Household Prods. sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Gillette India in the Personal & Household Prods. sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Gillette India 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Gillette India 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 Personal & Household Prods. industry.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Gillette India 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 Personal & Household Prods. industry and other sectors.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Personal & Household Prods. industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Gillette India can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Gillette India 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
– Gillette India 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 Personal & Household Prods. industry regulations.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Gillette India 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 Gillette India prominent markets.
Increasing wage structure of Gillette India
– 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 Gillette India.
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. Gillette India needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Personal & Household Prods. industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Personal & Household Prods. industry are lowering. It can presents Gillette India with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Personal & Household Prods. sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Gillette India Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Gillette India 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 Gillette India 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 Gillette India 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 Gillette India 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 Gillette India needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.