SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Maezawa Kyuso Industries (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Maezawa Kyuso Industries is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – wage bills are increasing, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
there is backlash against globalization, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Maezawa Kyuso Industries
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Maezawa Kyuso Industries can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Maezawa Kyuso Industries, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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 Maezawa Kyuso Industries can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Maezawa Kyuso Industries
2. Improving business portfolio management of Maezawa Kyuso Industries
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Misc. Fabricated Products sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Maezawa Kyuso Industries
Strengths of Maezawa Kyuso Industries | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Maezawa Kyuso Industries are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Misc. Fabricated Products industry
– Maezawa Kyuso Industries has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Maezawa Kyuso Industries to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Maezawa Kyuso Industries to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Maezawa Kyuso Industries has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Maezawa Kyuso Industries staying ahead in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Maezawa Kyuso Industries in Misc. Fabricated Products industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Learning organization
- Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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 Maezawa Kyuso Industries is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Maezawa Kyuso Industries emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High brand equity
– Maezawa Kyuso Industries has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Maezawa Kyuso Industries to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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 Misc. Fabricated Products
– Maezawa Kyuso Industries is one of the leading players in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry in Japan. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry in Japan but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Maezawa Kyuso Industries in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Organizational Resilience of Maezawa Kyuso Industries
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Maezawa Kyuso Industries does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Maezawa Kyuso Industries has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Maezawa Kyuso Industries has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Misc. Fabricated Products industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Maezawa Kyuso Industries have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Maezawa Kyuso Industries in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Maezawa Kyuso Industries has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Maezawa Kyuso Industries to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Analytics focus
– Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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 Misc. Fabricated Products 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.
Weaknesses of Maezawa Kyuso Industries | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Maezawa Kyuso Industries are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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 Misc. Fabricated Products industry using digital technology.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Maezawa Kyuso Industries needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Maezawa Kyuso Industries can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Maezawa Kyuso Industries is planning to shift buying processes online.
Need for greater diversity
– Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Maezawa Kyuso Industries is one of the leading players in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry in last five years.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Maezawa Kyuso Industries has high operating costs in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Maezawa Kyuso Industries lucrative customers.
Lack of clear differentiation of Maezawa Kyuso Industries products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Maezawa Kyuso Industries needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Employees’ less understanding of Maezawa Kyuso Industries strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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 Misc. Fabricated Products industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Maezawa Kyuso Industries has some of the most successful models in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Maezawa Kyuso Industries should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Maezawa Kyuso Industries, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Misc. Fabricated Products 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.
Maezawa Kyuso Industries Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Maezawa Kyuso Industries are -
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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 Misc. Fabricated Products industry.
Loyalty marketing
– Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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, Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Maezawa Kyuso Industries in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Maezawa Kyuso Industries has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Misc. Fabricated Products industry. This can help Maezawa Kyuso Industries to build a more holistic ecosystem for Maezawa Kyuso Industries products in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Misc. Fabricated Products industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Maezawa Kyuso Industries in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry. Now Maezawa Kyuso Industries can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Maezawa Kyuso Industries to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Maezawa Kyuso Industries to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Maezawa Kyuso Industries to increase its market reach. Maezawa Kyuso Industries will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Maezawa Kyuso Industries has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Misc. Fabricated Products sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Maezawa Kyuso Industries to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Maezawa Kyuso Industries to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Manufacturing automation
– Maezawa Kyuso Industries can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Misc. Fabricated Products 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, Maezawa Kyuso Industries is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Maezawa Kyuso Industries can utilize new technology in the field of Misc. Fabricated Products industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Misc. Fabricated Products industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Maezawa Kyuso Industries can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Threats Maezawa Kyuso Industries External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Maezawa Kyuso Industries are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Maezawa Kyuso Industries has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Maezawa Kyuso Industries needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Misc. Fabricated Products 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Maezawa Kyuso Industries may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Misc. Fabricated Products sector.
Regulatory challenges
– Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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 Misc. Fabricated Products industry regulations.
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.
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 Maezawa Kyuso Industries business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Maezawa Kyuso Industries is facing in Misc. Fabricated Products 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 Maezawa Kyuso Industries in the Misc. Fabricated Products sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing wage structure of Maezawa Kyuso Industries
– 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 Maezawa Kyuso Industries.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Misc. Fabricated Products industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Maezawa Kyuso Industries can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
Environmental challenges
– Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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. Maezawa Kyuso Industries can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry.
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. Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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 Maezawa Kyuso Industries prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Maezawa Kyuso Industries Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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 Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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 Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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 Maezawa Kyuso Industries 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 Maezawa Kyuso Industries needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.