Bubang (14470) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Bubang (South Korea)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Bubang is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing energy prices, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing transportation and logistics costs, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , geopolitical disruptions, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Bubang

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

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SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix

SWOT analysis of Bubang can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Bubang
2. Improving business portfolio management of Bubang
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in South Korea
4. Making a Appliance & Tool sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Bubang

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

The strengths of Bubang are -

Organizational Resilience of Bubang

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

Training and development

– Bubang 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.

Diverse revenue streams

– Bubang is present in almost all the verticals within the Appliance & Tool industry. This has provided Bubang 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.

Strong track record of project management in the Appliance & Tool industry

– Bubang is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.

Digital Transformation in Appliance & Tool industry

- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Bubang digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Bubang 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.

High switching costs

– The high switching costs that Bubang 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.

High brand equity

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

Ability to recruit top talent

– Bubang is one of the leading players in the Appliance & Tool 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.

Learning organization

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

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Bubang 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 Bubang comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Appliance & Tool 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.

Sustainable margins compare to other players in Appliance & Tool industry

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

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

The weaknesses of Bubang are -

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the Appliance & Tool industry, Bubang 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.

No frontier risks strategy

– From the 10K / annual statement of Bubang, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Appliance & Tool 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.

Employees’ less understanding of Bubang strategy

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

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Bubang is just above the Appliance & Tool 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.

Slow to harness new channels of communication

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

Skills based hiring in Appliance & Tool industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Bubang 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.

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, Bubang 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 Appliance & Tool industry using digital technology.

Aligning sales with marketing

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

Increasing silos among functional specialists

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

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 Bubang supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Bubang is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Bubang vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.

High dependence on Bubang ‘s star products

– The top 2 products and services of Bubang still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Appliance & Tool industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Bubang has relatively successful track record of launching new products.

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

The opportunities of Bubang are -

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Bubang 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 Bubang to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Appliance & Tool industry

– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Bubang in the Appliance & Tool industry. Now Bubang can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.

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

Loyalty marketing

– Bubang 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.

Reforming the budgeting process

- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Bubang can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.

Lowering marketing communication costs

– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Bubang in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Appliance & Tool industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.

Buying journey improvements

– Bubang can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Appliance & Tool 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.

Leveraging digital technologies

– Bubang 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.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Bubang 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.

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at Bubang 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 Appliance & Tool industry.

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 Bubang 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.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

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

Redefining models of collaboration and team work

– As explained in the weaknesses section, Bubang is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Bubang can utilize new technology in the field of Appliance & Tool industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.

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

The threats of Bubang are -

Barriers of entry lowering

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

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. Bubang 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.

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 Bubang business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.

Environmental challenges

– Bubang 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. Bubang can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Appliance & Tool industry.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Bubang may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Appliance & Tool sector.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Bubang has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Appliance & Tool industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Bubang needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Appliance & Tool 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.

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 Bubang in the Appliance & Tool sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Bubang 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 Appliance & Tool industry.

Consumer confidence and its impact on Bubang 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 Appliance & Tool industry and other sectors.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Bubang 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.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Bubang in Appliance & Tool industry. The Appliance & Tool 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.

Easy access to finance

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

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Bubang Template, Example

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

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