SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Gourmet Kineya (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Gourmet Kineya is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – geopolitical disruptions, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, wage bills are increasing, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing transportation and logistics costs, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Gourmet Kineya can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Gourmet Kineya, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Gourmet Kineya 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 Gourmet Kineya can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Gourmet Kineya
2. Improving business portfolio management of Gourmet Kineya
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 Gourmet Kineya
Strengths of Gourmet Kineya | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Gourmet Kineya are -
Learning organization
- Gourmet Kineya 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 Gourmet Kineya is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Gourmet Kineya emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Restaurants
– Gourmet Kineya 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 Gourmet Kineya in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Training and development
– Gourmet Kineya 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.
Analytics focus
– Gourmet Kineya is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the Restaurants industry. The technology infrastructure of Japan is also helping it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Gourmet Kineya 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Gourmet Kineya 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 Gourmet Kineya have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Diverse revenue streams
– Gourmet Kineya is present in almost all the verticals within the Restaurants industry. This has provided Gourmet Kineya 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.
Digital Transformation in Restaurants industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Gourmet Kineya digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Gourmet Kineya 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.
Organizational Resilience of Gourmet Kineya
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Gourmet Kineya 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 Gourmet Kineya 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Gourmet Kineya in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Gourmet Kineya has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Gourmet Kineya to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Innovation driven organization
– Gourmet Kineya is one of the most innovative firm in Restaurants sector.
Weaknesses of Gourmet Kineya | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Gourmet Kineya are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Gourmet Kineya products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Gourmet Kineya needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Employees’ less understanding of Gourmet Kineya strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Gourmet Kineya 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.
Skills based hiring in Restaurants industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Gourmet Kineya 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Gourmet Kineya has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Restaurants industry over the last five years. Gourmet Kineya 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Gourmet Kineya 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Gourmet Kineya is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Restaurants industry, but Gourmet Kineya needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Gourmet Kineya to focus more on services in the Restaurants industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Restaurants industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Japan, Gourmet Kineya 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 Restaurants industry.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Gourmet Kineya 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 Gourmet Kineya lucrative customers.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Gourmet Kineya has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the Restaurants industry using digital technology.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Gourmet Kineya 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Gourmet Kineya, in the dynamic environment of Restaurants industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Gourmet Kineya has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Gourmet Kineya Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Gourmet Kineya are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Gourmet Kineya 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 Gourmet Kineya to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Gourmet Kineya to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Gourmet Kineya 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 Gourmet Kineya to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Buying journey improvements
– Gourmet Kineya can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Restaurants 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Gourmet Kineya can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Gourmet Kineya operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Restaurants sector.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Gourmet Kineya has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Restaurants industry. This can help Gourmet Kineya to build a more holistic ecosystem for Gourmet Kineya products in the Restaurants industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Gourmet Kineya 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.
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 Gourmet Kineya 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
– Gourmet Kineya 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Gourmet Kineya 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Gourmet Kineya 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Gourmet Kineya 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, Gourmet Kineya is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Gourmet Kineya 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Gourmet Kineya 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.
Threats Gourmet Kineya External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Gourmet Kineya are -
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 Gourmet Kineya business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Gourmet Kineya
– 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 Gourmet Kineya.
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, Gourmet Kineya 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 Gourmet Kineya prominent markets.
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. Gourmet Kineya 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
– Gourmet Kineya 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.
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. Gourmet Kineya 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.
Environmental challenges
– Gourmet Kineya 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. Gourmet Kineya can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Restaurants industry.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Gourmet Kineya has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Restaurants industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Gourmet Kineya 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.
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. Gourmet Kineya needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Restaurants industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Restaurants industry are lowering. It can presents Gourmet Kineya with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Restaurants sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Gourmet Kineya 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Gourmet Kineya Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Gourmet Kineya 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 Gourmet Kineya 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 Gourmet Kineya 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 Gourmet Kineya 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 Gourmet Kineya needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.