Tabikobo (6548) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Tabikobo (Japan)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Tabikobo is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing transportation and logistics costs, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing commodity prices, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, technology disruption, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc

---

---

---

---

Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Tabikobo

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Tabikobo can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Tabikobo, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Tabikobo 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 Tabikobo can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Tabikobo
2. Improving business portfolio management of Tabikobo
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 Tabikobo

---

Strengths of Tabikobo | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Tabikobo are -

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Tabikobo 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 Tabikobo 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.

Ability to recruit top talent

– Tabikobo is one of the leading players in the Personal Services 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.

Highly skilled collaborators

– Tabikobo has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Personal Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Tabikobo have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

Analytics focus

– Tabikobo 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 Personal Services 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.

Organizational Resilience of Tabikobo

– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Tabikobo does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

– Suppliers of Tabikobo in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Tabikobo has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Tabikobo to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.

Sustainable margins compare to other players in Personal Services industry

– Tabikobo has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Tabikobo to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Personal Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Tabikobo to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.

High brand equity

– Tabikobo has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Tabikobo to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.

Ability to lead change in Personal Services

– Tabikobo is one of the leading players in the Personal Services industry in Japan. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Personal Services industry in Japan but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Tabikobo in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

– Tabikobo has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Tabikobo 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.

Learning organization

- Tabikobo 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 Tabikobo is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Tabikobo emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

---

---

Weaknesses of Tabikobo | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Tabikobo are -

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Tabikobo is just above the Personal Services 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.

Need for greater diversity

– Tabikobo 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.

Increasing silos among functional specialists

– The organizational structure of Tabikobo is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Personal Services industry, but Tabikobo needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Tabikobo to focus more on services in the Personal Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.

Products dominated business model

– Even though Tabikobo 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. Tabikobo should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.

Aligning sales with marketing

– From the outside it seems that Tabikobo needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Personal Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Tabikobo can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Tabikobo is planning to shift buying processes online.

Slow decision making process

– As mentioned earlier in the report, Tabikobo 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. Tabikobo 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.

Slow to harness new channels of communication

– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Tabikobo is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Tabikobo to provide better information regarding Personal Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.

Employees’ less understanding of Tabikobo strategy

– From the outside it seems that the employees of Tabikobo 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.

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the Personal Services industry, Tabikobo 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 Tabikobo ‘s star products

– The top 2 products and services of Tabikobo 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 Tabikobo has relatively successful track record of launching new products.

High bargaining power of channel partners in Personal Services industry

– because of the regulatory requirements in Japan, Tabikobo 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.

---

Tabikobo Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Tabikobo are -

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. Tabikobo can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

Low interest rates

– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Tabikobo 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.

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. Tabikobo 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. Tabikobo 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.

Finding new ways to collaborate

– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Personal Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Tabikobo can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– Tabikobo 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 Tabikobo to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Tabikobo to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

Redefining models of collaboration and team work

– As explained in the weaknesses section, Tabikobo is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Tabikobo 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.

Increase in government spending

– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Tabikobo can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Tabikobo operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Personal Services sector.

Loyalty marketing

– Tabikobo 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

– Tabikobo can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Personal Services 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.

Better consumer reach

– The expansion of the 5G network will help Tabikobo to increase its market reach. Tabikobo 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.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Tabikobo 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 Tabikobo to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.

Developing new processes and practices

– Tabikobo 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.

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 Tabikobo 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.

---

Threats Tabikobo External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Tabikobo are -

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Tabikobo 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.

Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins

– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Tabikobo 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 Tabikobo prominent markets.

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. Tabikobo 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

– Tabikobo 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. Tabikobo can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Personal Services industry.

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.

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 Tabikobo.

Barriers of entry lowering

– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Personal Services industry are lowering. It can presents Tabikobo with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Personal Services sector.

Easy access to finance

– Easy access to finance in Personal Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Tabikobo can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Tabikobo is facing in Personal Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

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. Tabikobo needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Personal Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

Regulatory challenges

– Tabikobo 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 Personal Services industry regulations.

Increasing wage structure of Tabikobo

– 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 Tabikobo.

Consumer confidence and its impact on Tabikobo 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.

---

Weighted SWOT Analysis of Tabikobo Template, Example

Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Tabikobo 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 Tabikobo 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 Tabikobo 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 Tabikobo 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 Tabikobo needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

--- ---