White Fox (AWAW) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Tobacco
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for White Fox (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , White Fox is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, geopolitical disruptions, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, technology disruption, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, wage bills are increasing, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that White Fox can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the White Fox, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which White Fox 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 White Fox can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of White Fox
2. Improving business portfolio management of White Fox
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Tobacco sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of White Fox
Strengths of White Fox | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of White Fox are -
Digital Transformation in Tobacco industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For White Fox digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. White Fox 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 White Fox 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Tobacco industry
– White Fox has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled White Fox to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Tobacco industry. The sustainable margins have also helped White Fox to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– White Fox has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Tobacco industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of White Fox have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the White Fox 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.
Innovation driven organization
– White Fox is one of the most innovative firm in Tobacco sector.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– White Fox has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – White Fox staying ahead in the Tobacco industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Strong track record of project management in the Tobacco industry
– White Fox is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Analytics focus
– White Fox is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the Tobacco industry. The technology infrastructure of United States is also helping it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Diverse revenue streams
– White Fox is present in almost all the verticals within the Tobacco industry. This has provided White Fox 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.
Learning organization
- White Fox 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 White Fox is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at White Fox emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of White Fox comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Tobacco 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.
Weaknesses of White Fox | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of White Fox are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, White Fox 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 Tobacco industry using digital technology.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, White Fox 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.
Skills based hiring in Tobacco industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at White Fox 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though White Fox has some of the most successful models in the Tobacco industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. White Fox should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Employees’ less understanding of White Fox strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of White Fox don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Tobacco industry, White Fox 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, White Fox needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As White Fox is one of the leading players in the Tobacco industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Tobacco industry in last five years.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of White Fox is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Tobacco industry, but White Fox needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help White Fox to focus more on services in the Tobacco industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, White Fox has high operating costs in the Tobacco industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract White Fox lucrative customers.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at White Fox, in the dynamic environment of Tobacco industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. White Fox has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
White Fox Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of White Fox are -
Buying journey improvements
– White Fox can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Tobacco industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help White Fox to increase its market reach. White Fox will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for White Fox in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Tobacco industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Tobacco industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. White Fox 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. White Fox 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, White Fox 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 White Fox to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects White Fox can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Leveraging digital technologies
– White Fox 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.
Loyalty marketing
– White Fox 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at White Fox 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 Tobacco industry.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Tobacco industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for White Fox in the Tobacco industry. Now White Fox can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for White Fox 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 White Fox to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, White Fox is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. White Fox can utilize new technology in the field of Tobacco industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, White Fox can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that White Fox operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Tobacco sector.
Threats White Fox External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of White Fox are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Tobacco industry are lowering. It can presents White Fox with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Tobacco 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.
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. White Fox needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Tobacco industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, White Fox may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Tobacco sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on White Fox 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 Tobacco industry and other sectors.
Environmental challenges
– White Fox 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. White Fox can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Tobacco industry.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that White Fox is facing in Tobacco sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 White Fox in the Tobacco sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, White Fox 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 White Fox prominent markets.
Regulatory challenges
– White Fox 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 Tobacco industry regulations.
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. White Fox 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Tobacco industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. White Fox can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– White Fox 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of White Fox Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at White Fox 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 White Fox 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 White Fox 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 White Fox 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 White Fox needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.