SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Mitsubishi Shokuhin (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Mitsubishi Shokuhin is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, geopolitical disruptions, increasing energy prices, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there is backlash against globalization, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, wage bills are increasing,
customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, technology disruption, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Mitsubishi Shokuhin
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Mitsubishi Shokuhin can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Mitsubishi Shokuhin, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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 Mitsubishi Shokuhin can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Mitsubishi Shokuhin
2. Improving business portfolio management of Mitsubishi Shokuhin
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Food Processing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Mitsubishi Shokuhin
Strengths of Mitsubishi Shokuhin | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Mitsubishi Shokuhin are -
Organizational Resilience of Mitsubishi Shokuhin
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Mitsubishi Shokuhin does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Mitsubishi Shokuhin comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Food Processing 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Mitsubishi Shokuhin in Food Processing industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Mitsubishi Shokuhin is one of the most innovative firm in Food Processing sector.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Mitsubishi Shokuhin is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry in Japan. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Japan. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
High brand equity
– Mitsubishi Shokuhin has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Mitsubishi Shokuhin to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Mitsubishi Shokuhin in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Mitsubishi Shokuhin has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Mitsubishi Shokuhin to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Diverse revenue streams
– Mitsubishi Shokuhin is present in almost all the verticals within the Food Processing industry. This has provided Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Mitsubishi Shokuhin has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Mitsubishi Shokuhin staying ahead in the Food Processing industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Food Processing industry
– Mitsubishi Shokuhin has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Mitsubishi Shokuhin to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Food Processing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Mitsubishi Shokuhin to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Weaknesses of Mitsubishi Shokuhin | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Mitsubishi Shokuhin are -
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Mitsubishi Shokuhin, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Food Processing 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 bargaining power of channel partners in Food Processing industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Japan, Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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 Food Processing industry.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Mitsubishi Shokuhin is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Food Processing industry, but Mitsubishi Shokuhin needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Mitsubishi Shokuhin to focus more on services in the Food Processing industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Lack of clear differentiation of Mitsubishi Shokuhin products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Mitsubishi Shokuhin needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Food Processing industry, Mitsubishi Shokuhin needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Mitsubishi Shokuhin, in the dynamic environment of Food Processing industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Mitsubishi Shokuhin has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Employees’ less understanding of Mitsubishi Shokuhin strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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.
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 Mitsubishi Shokuhin supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Mitsubishi Shokuhin is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Mitsubishi Shokuhin vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Mitsubishi Shokuhin has some of the most successful models in the Food Processing industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Mitsubishi Shokuhin should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Need for greater diversity
– Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Japan, Mitsubishi Shokuhin needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Mitsubishi Shokuhin Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Mitsubishi Shokuhin are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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, Mitsubishi Shokuhin is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Mitsubishi Shokuhin can utilize new technology in the field of Food Processing industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
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 Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Food Processing industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Mitsubishi Shokuhin in the Food Processing industry. Now Mitsubishi Shokuhin can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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 Food Processing industry.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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
– Mitsubishi Shokuhin can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Food Processing 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Food Processing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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. Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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, Mitsubishi Shokuhin can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Mitsubishi Shokuhin operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Food Processing sector.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Food Processing industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Mitsubishi Shokuhin can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Threats Mitsubishi Shokuhin External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Mitsubishi Shokuhin are -
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. Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Food Processing industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Mitsubishi Shokuhin can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Mitsubishi Shokuhin may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Food Processing sector.
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. Mitsubishi Shokuhin needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Food Processing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Environmental challenges
– Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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. Mitsubishi Shokuhin can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Food Processing industry.
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 Mitsubishi Shokuhin business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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 Food Processing industry and other sectors.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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 Food Processing industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Food Processing industry are lowering. It can presents Mitsubishi Shokuhin with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Food Processing sector.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Mitsubishi Shokuhin has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Food Processing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Mitsubishi Shokuhin needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Food Processing 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Mitsubishi Shokuhin Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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 Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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 Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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 Mitsubishi Shokuhin 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 Mitsubishi Shokuhin needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
