SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Yokohama Gyorui (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Yokohama Gyorui is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing commodity prices, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Yokohama Gyorui can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Yokohama Gyorui, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Yokohama Gyorui 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 Yokohama Gyorui can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Yokohama Gyorui
2. Improving business portfolio management of Yokohama Gyorui
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Food Processing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Yokohama Gyorui
Strengths of Yokohama Gyorui | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Yokohama Gyorui are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Yokohama Gyorui has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Yokohama Gyorui 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Yokohama Gyorui in Food Processing 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 Yokohama Gyorui 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Food Processing industry
– Yokohama Gyorui is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Yokohama Gyorui has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Yokohama Gyorui staying ahead in the Food Processing industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Food Processing industry
– Yokohama Gyorui has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Yokohama Gyorui to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Food Processing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Yokohama Gyorui to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Yokohama Gyorui
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Yokohama Gyorui 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 Yokohama Gyorui comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Food Processing 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Yokohama Gyorui has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Food Processing industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Yokohama Gyorui have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to lead change in Food Processing
– Yokohama Gyorui is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry in Japan. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Food Processing industry in Japan but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Yokohama Gyorui in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
High brand equity
– Yokohama Gyorui has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Yokohama Gyorui to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Training and development
– Yokohama Gyorui has one of the best training and development program in Consumer/Non-Cyclical 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.
Weaknesses of Yokohama Gyorui | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Yokohama Gyorui are -
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Yokohama Gyorui, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Food Processing 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Yokohama Gyorui 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Yokohama Gyorui 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 Food Processing industry using digital technology.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Yokohama Gyorui is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Food Processing industry in last five years.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Yokohama Gyorui needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Food Processing industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Yokohama Gyorui can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Yokohama Gyorui is planning to shift buying processes online.
Employees’ less understanding of Yokohama Gyorui strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Yokohama Gyorui 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, Yokohama Gyorui is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Yokohama Gyorui to provide better information regarding Food Processing products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Yokohama Gyorui has high operating costs in the Food Processing industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Yokohama Gyorui lucrative customers.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Yokohama Gyorui has some of the most successful models in the Food Processing industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Yokohama Gyorui should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High dependence on Yokohama Gyorui ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Yokohama Gyorui still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Food Processing industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Yokohama Gyorui has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Yokohama Gyorui is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Food Processing industry, but Yokohama Gyorui needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Yokohama Gyorui to focus more on services in the Food Processing industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Yokohama Gyorui Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Yokohama Gyorui 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. Yokohama Gyorui can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Buying journey improvements
– Yokohama Gyorui can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Food Processing 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, Yokohama Gyorui can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Yokohama Gyorui operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Food Processing sector.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Yokohama Gyorui can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Food Processing industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Yokohama Gyorui in the Food Processing industry. Now Yokohama Gyorui can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Yokohama Gyorui 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Yokohama Gyorui is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Yokohama Gyorui can utilize new technology in the field of Food Processing industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Yokohama Gyorui 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 Yokohama Gyorui to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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 Yokohama Gyorui 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Yokohama Gyorui 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Yokohama Gyorui 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Food Processing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Yokohama Gyorui 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. Yokohama Gyorui 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Yokohama Gyorui has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Food Processing industry. This can help Yokohama Gyorui to build a more holistic ecosystem for Yokohama Gyorui products in the Food Processing industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Yokohama Gyorui External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Yokohama Gyorui 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 Yokohama Gyorui business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Yokohama Gyorui may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Food Processing 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Yokohama Gyorui 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 Food Processing industry regulations.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Yokohama Gyorui 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 Food Processing industry and other sectors.
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 Yokohama Gyorui.
Environmental challenges
– Yokohama Gyorui 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. Yokohama Gyorui can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Food Processing industry.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Yokohama Gyorui 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 Food Processing industry are lowering. It can presents Yokohama Gyorui with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Food Processing sector.
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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Yokohama Gyorui 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 Yokohama Gyorui prominent markets.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Yokohama Gyorui has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Food Processing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Yokohama Gyorui needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Food Processing 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Yokohama Gyorui in Food Processing industry. The Food Processing 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Yokohama Gyorui Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Yokohama Gyorui 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 Yokohama Gyorui 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 Yokohama Gyorui 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 Yokohama Gyorui 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 Yokohama Gyorui needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.