SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Boryung Medience (South Korea)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Boryung Medience is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Boryung Medience can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Boryung Medience, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Boryung Medience 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 Boryung Medience can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Boryung Medience
2. Improving business portfolio management of Boryung Medience
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in South Korea
4. Making a Apparel/Accessories sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Boryung Medience
Strengths of Boryung Medience | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Boryung Medience are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Apparel/Accessories industry
– Boryung Medience has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Boryung Medience to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Apparel/Accessories industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Boryung Medience to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Apparel/Accessories industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Boryung Medience digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Boryung Medience 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Boryung Medience is one of the leading players in the Apparel/Accessories industry in South Korea. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in South Korea. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Organizational Resilience of Boryung Medience
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Boryung Medience does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Boryung Medience 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Boryung Medience has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Boryung Medience 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.
Training and development
– Boryung Medience has one of the best training and development program in Consumer 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Boryung Medience comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Apparel/Accessories 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.
High brand equity
– Boryung Medience has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Boryung Medience to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- Boryung Medience 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 Boryung Medience is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Boryung Medience emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Boryung Medience in Apparel/Accessories industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Innovation driven organization
– Boryung Medience is one of the most innovative firm in Apparel/Accessories sector.
Weaknesses of Boryung Medience | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Boryung Medience are -
Need for greater diversity
– Boryung Medience 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Boryung Medience is just above the Apparel/Accessories 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Boryung Medience has high operating costs in the Apparel/Accessories industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Boryung Medience lucrative customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Boryung Medience needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Apparel/Accessories industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Boryung Medience can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Boryung Medience is planning to shift buying processes online.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Boryung Medience 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Apparel/Accessories industry, Boryung Medience 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 Boryung Medience ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Boryung Medience still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Apparel/Accessories industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Boryung Medience has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Boryung Medience, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Apparel/Accessories 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Boryung Medience is one of the leading players in the Apparel/Accessories industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Apparel/Accessories industry in last five years.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Boryung Medience is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Boryung Medience to provide better information regarding Apparel/Accessories products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Boryung Medience has some of the most successful models in the Apparel/Accessories industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Boryung Medience should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Boryung Medience Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Boryung Medience are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Boryung Medience 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 Boryung Medience to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Boryung Medience 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 Boryung Medience to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Apparel/Accessories industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Boryung Medience 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. Boryung Medience 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Boryung Medience 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Boryung Medience has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Apparel/Accessories sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Boryung Medience to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Boryung Medience to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Boryung Medience 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 Apparel/Accessories industry.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Boryung Medience can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Boryung Medience 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Boryung Medience has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Apparel/Accessories industry. This can help Boryung Medience to build a more holistic ecosystem for Boryung Medience products in the Apparel/Accessories industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Boryung Medience 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.
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. Boryung Medience can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Buying journey improvements
– Boryung Medience can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Apparel/Accessories 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, Boryung Medience can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Boryung Medience operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Apparel/Accessories sector.
Threats Boryung Medience External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Boryung Medience are -
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 Boryung Medience.
Regulatory challenges
– Boryung Medience 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 Apparel/Accessories industry regulations.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Boryung Medience may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Apparel/Accessories sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Boryung Medience 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 Boryung Medience prominent markets.
Environmental challenges
– Boryung Medience 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. Boryung Medience can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Apparel/Accessories industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Boryung Medience has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Apparel/Accessories industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Boryung Medience needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Apparel/Accessories sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Boryung Medience needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Apparel/Accessories industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Apparel/Accessories industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Boryung Medience 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 Boryung Medience is facing in Apparel/Accessories sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Boryung Medience 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 Apparel/Accessories industry and other sectors.
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 Boryung Medience in the Apparel/Accessories sector and impact the bottomline 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.
Increasing wage structure of Boryung Medience
– 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 Boryung Medience.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Boryung Medience Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Boryung Medience 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 Boryung Medience 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 Boryung Medience 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 Boryung Medience 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 Boryung Medience needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.