SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Yoshinoya Holdings (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Yoshinoya Holdings is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is backlash against globalization, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Yoshinoya Holdings
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Yoshinoya Holdings can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Yoshinoya Holdings, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Yoshinoya Holdings 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 Yoshinoya Holdings can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Yoshinoya Holdings
2. Improving business portfolio management of Yoshinoya Holdings
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Restaurants sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Yoshinoya Holdings
Strengths of Yoshinoya Holdings | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Yoshinoya Holdings are -
Strong track record of project management in the Restaurants industry
– Yoshinoya Holdings is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Yoshinoya Holdings in Restaurants industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Yoshinoya Holdings has one of the best training and development program in Services industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Yoshinoya Holdings comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Restaurants 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Yoshinoya Holdings has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Yoshinoya Holdings staying ahead in the Restaurants industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Yoshinoya Holdings 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 Restaurants
– Yoshinoya Holdings is one of the leading players in the Restaurants industry in Japan. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Restaurants industry in Japan but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Yoshinoya Holdings in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Innovation driven organization
– Yoshinoya Holdings is one of the most innovative firm in Restaurants sector.
Organizational Resilience of Yoshinoya Holdings
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Yoshinoya Holdings does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Yoshinoya Holdings is one of the leading players in the Restaurants 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Restaurants industry
– Yoshinoya Holdings has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Yoshinoya Holdings to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Restaurants industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Yoshinoya Holdings to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Yoshinoya Holdings has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Restaurants industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Yoshinoya Holdings have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Yoshinoya Holdings | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Yoshinoya Holdings are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Yoshinoya Holdings is one of the leading players in the Restaurants industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Restaurants industry in last five years.
High dependence on Yoshinoya Holdings ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Yoshinoya Holdings still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Restaurants industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Yoshinoya Holdings has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Employees’ less understanding of Yoshinoya Holdings strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Yoshinoya Holdings 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, Yoshinoya Holdings is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Yoshinoya Holdings to provide better information regarding Restaurants products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Yoshinoya Holdings is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Restaurants industry, but Yoshinoya Holdings needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Yoshinoya Holdings to focus more on services in the Restaurants industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Yoshinoya Holdings has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Yoshinoya Holdings has high operating costs in the Restaurants industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Yoshinoya Holdings lucrative customers.
Lack of clear differentiation of Yoshinoya Holdings products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Yoshinoya Holdings needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Need for greater diversity
– Yoshinoya Holdings 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Yoshinoya Holdings is just above the Restaurants industry average. It 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Restaurants industry, Yoshinoya Holdings 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.
Yoshinoya Holdings Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Yoshinoya Holdings are -
Loyalty marketing
– Yoshinoya Holdings 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Yoshinoya Holdings 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 Restaurants industry.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Yoshinoya Holdings has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Restaurants industry. This can help Yoshinoya Holdings to build a more holistic ecosystem for Yoshinoya Holdings products in the Restaurants industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Manufacturing automation
– Yoshinoya Holdings can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Restaurants sector. 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Yoshinoya Holdings is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Yoshinoya Holdings can utilize new technology in the field of Restaurants industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– Yoshinoya Holdings can develop new processes and procedures in Restaurants 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Yoshinoya Holdings 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Restaurants industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Yoshinoya Holdings 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. Yoshinoya Holdings 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Yoshinoya Holdings 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 Restaurants industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Yoshinoya Holdings can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Yoshinoya Holdings 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 Yoshinoya Holdings 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
– Yoshinoya Holdings has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Restaurants sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Yoshinoya Holdings to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Yoshinoya Holdings to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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. Yoshinoya Holdings can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Threats Yoshinoya Holdings External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Yoshinoya Holdings are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Yoshinoya Holdings high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Restaurants industry are lowering. It can presents Yoshinoya Holdings with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Restaurants sector.
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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Yoshinoya Holdings 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 Yoshinoya Holdings prominent markets.
Regulatory challenges
– Yoshinoya Holdings 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 Restaurants industry regulations.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Yoshinoya Holdings has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Restaurants industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Yoshinoya Holdings needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Restaurants 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
– Yoshinoya Holdings 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. Yoshinoya Holdings can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Restaurants industry.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Yoshinoya Holdings 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 Restaurants industry.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Restaurants industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Yoshinoya Holdings can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Yoshinoya Holdings in Restaurants industry. The Restaurants 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Yoshinoya Holdings 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 Restaurants industry and other sectors.
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 Yoshinoya Holdings in the Restaurants sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Yoshinoya Holdings is facing in Restaurants sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Yoshinoya Holdings Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Yoshinoya Holdings 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 Yoshinoya Holdings 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 Yoshinoya Holdings 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 Yoshinoya Holdings 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 Yoshinoya Holdings needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.