SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Dover Motorsports (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Dover Motorsports is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, wage bills are increasing, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Dover Motorsports
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Dover Motorsports can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Dover Motorsports, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Dover Motorsports 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 Dover Motorsports can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Dover Motorsports
2. Improving business portfolio management of Dover Motorsports
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Recreational Activities sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Dover Motorsports
Strengths of Dover Motorsports | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Dover Motorsports are -
High brand equity
– Dover Motorsports has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Dover Motorsports to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Dover Motorsports has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Dover Motorsports staying ahead in the Recreational Activities industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Organizational Resilience of Dover Motorsports
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Dover Motorsports does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to lead change in Recreational Activities
– Dover Motorsports is one of the leading players in the Recreational Activities industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Recreational Activities industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Dover Motorsports in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Dover Motorsports 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.
Learning organization
- Dover Motorsports 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 Dover Motorsports is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Dover Motorsports emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Dover Motorsports has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Recreational Activities industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Dover Motorsports have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Recreational Activities industry
– Dover Motorsports has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Dover Motorsports to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Recreational Activities industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Dover Motorsports to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Dover Motorsports in Recreational Activities 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 Dover Motorsports 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Dover Motorsports in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Dover Motorsports has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Dover Motorsports to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Training and development
– Dover Motorsports has one of the best training and development program in Services 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 Dover Motorsports | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Dover Motorsports are -
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Dover Motorsports, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Recreational Activities 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 Dover Motorsports is one of the leading players in the Recreational Activities industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Recreational Activities industry in last five years.
Lack of clear differentiation of Dover Motorsports products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Dover Motorsports needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Dover Motorsports has some of the most successful models in the Recreational Activities industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Dover Motorsports should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Employees’ less understanding of Dover Motorsports strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Dover Motorsports 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.
Skills based hiring in Recreational Activities industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Dover Motorsports 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Dover Motorsports 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, Dover Motorsports 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 Recreational Activities industry using digital technology.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Dover Motorsports, in the dynamic environment of Recreational Activities industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Dover Motorsports has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Recreational Activities industry, Dover Motorsports 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 bargaining power of channel partners in Recreational Activities industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Dover Motorsports 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 Recreational Activities industry.
Dover Motorsports Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Dover Motorsports are -
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Dover Motorsports has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Recreational Activities industry. This can help Dover Motorsports to build a more holistic ecosystem for Dover Motorsports products in the Recreational Activities industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Recreational Activities industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Dover Motorsports can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Dover Motorsports 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.
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. Dover Motorsports can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Loyalty marketing
– Dover Motorsports 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, Dover Motorsports 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Dover Motorsports 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 Recreational Activities industry.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Dover Motorsports in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Recreational Activities industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Dover Motorsports has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Recreational Activities sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Dover Motorsports to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Dover Motorsports to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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 Dover Motorsports 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Dover Motorsports can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Recreational Activities sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Dover Motorsports can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Buying journey improvements
– Dover Motorsports can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Recreational Activities 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.
Threats Dover Motorsports External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Dover Motorsports are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Dover Motorsports may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Recreational Activities sector.
Increasing wage structure of Dover Motorsports
– 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 Dover Motorsports.
Regulatory challenges
– Dover Motorsports 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 Recreational Activities industry regulations.
Environmental challenges
– Dover Motorsports 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. Dover Motorsports can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Recreational Activities industry.
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 Dover Motorsports in the Recreational Activities sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Dover Motorsports in Recreational Activities industry. The Recreational Activities 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Recreational Activities industry are lowering. It can presents Dover Motorsports with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Recreational Activities sector.
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 Dover Motorsports.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Dover Motorsports 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 Dover Motorsports prominent markets.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Dover Motorsports 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 Recreational Activities industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Dover Motorsports has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Recreational Activities industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Dover Motorsports needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Recreational Activities 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.
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 Dover Motorsports business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Dover Motorsports Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Dover Motorsports 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 Dover Motorsports 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 Dover Motorsports 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 Dover Motorsports 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 Dover Motorsports needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.