Hakuyosha Co Ltd (9731) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Personal Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Hakuyosha Co Ltd (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Hakuyosha Co Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – technology disruption, wage bills are increasing, geopolitical disruptions, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Hakuyosha Co Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Hakuyosha Co Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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 Hakuyosha Co Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Hakuyosha Co Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Hakuyosha Co Ltd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Personal Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Hakuyosha Co Ltd
Strengths of Hakuyosha Co Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Hakuyosha Co Ltd are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Personal Services industry
– Hakuyosha Co Ltd has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Hakuyosha Co Ltd to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Personal Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Hakuyosha Co Ltd to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Hakuyosha Co Ltd in Personal Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Hakuyosha Co Ltd has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Hakuyosha Co Ltd staying ahead in the Personal Services industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Innovation driven organization
– Hakuyosha Co Ltd is one of the most innovative firm in Personal Services sector.
Strong track record of project management in the Personal Services industry
– Hakuyosha Co Ltd is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Diverse revenue streams
– Hakuyosha Co Ltd is present in almost all the verticals within the Personal Services industry. This has provided Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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.
High brand equity
– Hakuyosha Co Ltd has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Hakuyosha Co Ltd to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Hakuyosha Co Ltd in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Hakuyosha Co Ltd has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Hakuyosha Co Ltd to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Digital Transformation in Personal Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Hakuyosha Co Ltd digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Hakuyosha Co Ltd comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Personal Services 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.
Weaknesses of Hakuyosha Co Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Hakuyosha Co Ltd are -
Skills based hiring in Personal Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Personal Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Japan, Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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 Personal Services industry.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Hakuyosha Co Ltd has some of the most successful models in the Personal Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Hakuyosha Co Ltd should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Need for greater diversity
– Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Personal Services industry, Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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.
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 Hakuyosha Co Ltd supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Hakuyosha Co Ltd is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Hakuyosha Co Ltd vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Hakuyosha Co Ltd is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Personal Services industry, but Hakuyosha Co Ltd needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Hakuyosha Co Ltd to focus more on services in the Personal Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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 Personal Services industry using digital technology.
Employees’ less understanding of Hakuyosha Co Ltd strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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 decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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 Services industry over the last five years. Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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.
High dependence on Hakuyosha Co Ltd ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Hakuyosha Co Ltd still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Personal Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Hakuyosha Co Ltd has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Hakuyosha Co Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Hakuyosha Co Ltd are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Hakuyosha Co Ltd has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Personal Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Hakuyosha Co Ltd to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Hakuyosha Co Ltd to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Hakuyosha Co Ltd in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Personal Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Hakuyosha Co Ltd to increase its market reach. Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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 Hakuyosha Co Ltd to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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 Hakuyosha Co Ltd to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Personal Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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. Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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, Hakuyosha Co Ltd can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Hakuyosha Co Ltd operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Personal Services sector.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Hakuyosha Co Ltd has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Personal Services industry. This can help Hakuyosha Co Ltd to build a more holistic ecosystem for Hakuyosha Co Ltd products in the Personal Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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
– Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Hakuyosha Co Ltd is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Hakuyosha Co Ltd can utilize new technology in the field of Personal Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– Hakuyosha Co Ltd can develop new processes and procedures in Personal Services 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.
Threats Hakuyosha Co Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Hakuyosha Co Ltd are -
Increasing wage structure of Hakuyosha Co Ltd
– 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 Hakuyosha Co Ltd.
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 Hakuyosha Co Ltd in the Personal Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Hakuyosha Co Ltd has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Personal Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Hakuyosha Co Ltd needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Personal Services 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.
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 Hakuyosha Co Ltd business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Hakuyosha Co Ltd.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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 Services industry and other sectors.
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. Hakuyosha Co Ltd needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Personal Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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 Hakuyosha Co Ltd prominent markets.
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.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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 Services industry.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Hakuyosha Co Ltd is facing in Personal Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Hakuyosha Co Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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 Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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 Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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 Hakuyosha Co Ltd 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 Hakuyosha Co Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.