Haverty Furniture A (HVTa) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Haverty Furniture A (United States)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Haverty Furniture A is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, there is backlash against globalization, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing commodity prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Haverty Furniture A

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Haverty Furniture A can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Haverty Furniture A, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Haverty Furniture A 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 Haverty Furniture A can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Haverty Furniture A
2. Improving business portfolio management of Haverty Furniture A
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Furniture & Fixtures sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Haverty Furniture A

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Strengths of Haverty Furniture A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Haverty Furniture A are -

Analytics focus

– Haverty Furniture A 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 Furniture & Fixtures 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

– Haverty Furniture A is present in almost all the verticals within the Furniture & Fixtures industry. This has provided Haverty Furniture A 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.

Ability to recruit top talent

– Haverty Furniture A is one of the leading players in the Furniture & Fixtures industry in United States. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United States. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.

Innovation driven organization

– Haverty Furniture A is one of the most innovative firm in Furniture & Fixtures sector.

Training and development

– Haverty Furniture A 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.

Strong track record of project management in the Furniture & Fixtures industry

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

Organizational Resilience of Haverty Furniture A

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

High brand equity

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

Ability to lead change in Furniture & Fixtures

– Haverty Furniture A is one of the leading players in the Furniture & Fixtures industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Furniture & Fixtures industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Haverty Furniture A in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.

Highly skilled collaborators

– Haverty Furniture A has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Furniture & Fixtures industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Haverty Furniture A have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

– Suppliers of Haverty Furniture A in the Consumer Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Haverty Furniture A has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Haverty Furniture A to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy of Haverty Furniture A comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Furniture & Fixtures 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.

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Weaknesses of Haverty Furniture A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Haverty Furniture A are -

Slow to strategic competitive environment developments

– As Haverty Furniture A is one of the leading players in the Furniture & Fixtures industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Furniture & Fixtures 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, Haverty Furniture A is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Haverty Furniture A to provide better information regarding Furniture & Fixtures products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.

Lack of clear differentiation of Haverty Furniture A products

– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Haverty Furniture A needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.

Employees’ less understanding of Haverty Furniture A strategy

– From the outside it seems that the employees of Haverty Furniture A 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.

Need for greater diversity

– Haverty Furniture A 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.

Aligning sales with marketing

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

High cash cycle compare to competitors

Haverty Furniture A has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Furniture & Fixtures industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.

Increasing silos among functional specialists

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

Low market penetration in new markets

– Outside its home market of United States, Haverty Furniture A needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.

Ability to respond to the competition

– As the decision making is very deliberative at Haverty Furniture A, in the dynamic environment of Furniture & Fixtures industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Haverty Furniture A has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.

Skills based hiring in Furniture & Fixtures industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Haverty Furniture A 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.

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Haverty Furniture A Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Haverty Furniture A are -

Manufacturing automation

– Haverty Furniture A can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Furniture & Fixtures 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.

Developing new processes and practices

– Haverty Furniture A can develop new processes and procedures in Furniture & Fixtures 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.

Finding new ways to collaborate

– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Furniture & Fixtures industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Haverty Furniture A can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.

Reforming the budgeting process

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

Creating value in data economy

– The success of analytics program of Haverty Furniture A has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Furniture & Fixtures industry. This can help Haverty Furniture A to build a more holistic ecosystem for Haverty Furniture A products in the Furniture & Fixtures industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.

Lowering marketing communication costs

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

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

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

Leveraging digital technologies

– Haverty Furniture A 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

– Haverty Furniture A 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.

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. Haverty Furniture A can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

Increase in government spending

– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Haverty Furniture A can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Haverty Furniture A operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Furniture & Fixtures sector.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Haverty Furniture A 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.

Buying journey improvements

– Haverty Furniture A can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Furniture & Fixtures 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.

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Threats Haverty Furniture A External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Haverty Furniture A are -

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Haverty Furniture A 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 Furniture & Fixtures industry.

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. Haverty Furniture A needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Furniture & Fixtures industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Haverty Furniture A in Furniture & Fixtures industry. The Furniture & Fixtures 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.

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.

Consumer confidence and its impact on Haverty Furniture A 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 Furniture & Fixtures industry and other sectors.

Increasing wage structure of Haverty Furniture A

– 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 Haverty Furniture A.

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 Haverty Furniture A in the Furniture & Fixtures sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

Regulatory challenges

– Haverty Furniture A 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 Furniture & Fixtures industry regulations.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Haverty Furniture A is facing in Furniture & Fixtures sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Haverty Furniture A 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.

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. Haverty Furniture A 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 Haverty Furniture A 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.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Haverty Furniture A Template, Example

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

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