Cho Kwang Pain (4910) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Chemical Manufacturing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Cho Kwang Pain (South Korea)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Cho Kwang Pain is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing commodity prices, increasing energy prices, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , wage bills are increasing, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
there is backlash against globalization, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Cho Kwang Pain can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Cho Kwang Pain, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Cho Kwang Pain 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 Cho Kwang Pain can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Cho Kwang Pain
2. Improving business portfolio management of Cho Kwang Pain
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in South Korea
4. Making a Chemical Manufacturing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Cho Kwang Pain
Strengths of Cho Kwang Pain | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Cho Kwang Pain are -
Innovation driven organization
– Cho Kwang Pain is one of the most innovative firm in Chemical Manufacturing sector.
Training and development
– Cho Kwang Pain has one of the best training and development program in Basic Materials 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.
Learning organization
- Cho Kwang Pain 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 Cho Kwang Pain is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Cho Kwang Pain emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Chemical Manufacturing
– Cho Kwang Pain is one of the leading players in the Chemical Manufacturing industry in South Korea. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Chemical Manufacturing industry in South Korea but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Cho Kwang Pain in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Digital Transformation in Chemical Manufacturing industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Cho Kwang Pain digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Cho Kwang Pain 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Cho Kwang Pain has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Cho Kwang Pain 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Cho Kwang Pain 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
– Cho Kwang Pain is one of the leading players in the Chemical Manufacturing 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Chemical Manufacturing industry
– Cho Kwang Pain has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Cho Kwang Pain to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Chemical Manufacturing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Cho Kwang Pain to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Cho Kwang Pain has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Cho Kwang Pain staying ahead in the Chemical Manufacturing industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Diverse revenue streams
– Cho Kwang Pain is present in almost all the verticals within the Chemical Manufacturing industry. This has provided Cho Kwang Pain 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Cho Kwang Pain 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.
Weaknesses of Cho Kwang Pain | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Cho Kwang Pain are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Cho Kwang Pain has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Chemical Manufacturing industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Cho Kwang Pain has some of the most successful models in the Chemical Manufacturing industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Cho Kwang Pain should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Skills based hiring in Chemical Manufacturing industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Cho Kwang Pain 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Cho Kwang Pain strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Cho Kwang Pain 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Cho Kwang Pain, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Chemical Manufacturing 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Cho Kwang Pain is just above the Chemical Manufacturing 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Cho Kwang Pain, in the dynamic environment of Chemical Manufacturing industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Cho Kwang Pain has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Need for greater diversity
– Cho Kwang Pain 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Cho Kwang Pain 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 Chemical Manufacturing industry using digital technology.
High dependence on Cho Kwang Pain ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Cho Kwang Pain still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Chemical Manufacturing industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Cho Kwang Pain has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Chemical Manufacturing industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in South Korea, Cho Kwang Pain 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 Chemical Manufacturing industry.
Cho Kwang Pain Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Cho Kwang Pain are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Cho Kwang Pain can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Cho Kwang Pain 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 Cho Kwang Pain to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Buying journey improvements
– Cho Kwang Pain can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Chemical Manufacturing 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Cho Kwang Pain 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 Cho Kwang Pain to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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 Cho Kwang Pain 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Cho Kwang Pain has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Chemical Manufacturing sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Cho Kwang Pain to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Cho Kwang Pain to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Cho Kwang Pain has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Chemical Manufacturing industry. This can help Cho Kwang Pain to build a more holistic ecosystem for Cho Kwang Pain products in the Chemical Manufacturing industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– Cho Kwang Pain can develop new processes and procedures in Chemical Manufacturing 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.
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. Cho Kwang Pain can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Chemical Manufacturing industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Cho Kwang Pain in the Chemical Manufacturing industry. Now Cho Kwang Pain can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Chemical Manufacturing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Cho Kwang Pain 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. Cho Kwang Pain 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Cho Kwang Pain 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Cho Kwang Pain 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.
Threats Cho Kwang Pain External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Cho Kwang Pain are -
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. Cho Kwang Pain 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.
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 Cho Kwang Pain in the Chemical Manufacturing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Cho Kwang Pain is facing in Chemical Manufacturing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Cho Kwang Pain 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 Cho Kwang Pain prominent markets.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Cho Kwang Pain may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Chemical Manufacturing sector.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Chemical Manufacturing industry are lowering. It can presents Cho Kwang Pain with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Chemical Manufacturing sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Cho Kwang Pain 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 Chemical Manufacturing industry.
Environmental challenges
– Cho Kwang Pain 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. Cho Kwang Pain can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Chemical Manufacturing industry.
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 Cho Kwang Pain.
Regulatory challenges
– Cho Kwang Pain 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 Chemical Manufacturing industry regulations.
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. Cho Kwang Pain needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Chemical Manufacturing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Cho Kwang Pain 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 Chemical Manufacturing industry and other sectors.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Cho Kwang Pain has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Chemical Manufacturing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Cho Kwang Pain needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Chemical Manufacturing 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Cho Kwang Pain Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Cho Kwang Pain 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 Cho Kwang Pain 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 Cho Kwang Pain 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 Cho Kwang Pain 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 Cho Kwang Pain needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.