Kona Gold Solutions (KGKG) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Kona Gold Solutions (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Kona Gold Solutions is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – technology disruption, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, wage bills are increasing, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic ,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Kona Gold Solutions
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Kona Gold Solutions can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Kona Gold Solutions, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Kona Gold Solutions 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 Kona Gold Solutions can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Kona Gold Solutions
2. Improving business portfolio management of Kona Gold Solutions
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Kona Gold Solutions
Strengths of Kona Gold Solutions | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Kona Gold Solutions are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Kona Gold Solutions is one of the leading players in the 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
– Kona Gold Solutions is one of the most innovative firm in sector.
High brand equity
– Kona Gold Solutions has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Kona Gold Solutions to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Training and development
– Kona Gold Solutions has one of the best training and development program in 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.
Ability to lead change in
– Kona Gold Solutions is one of the leading players in the industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Kona Gold Solutions in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– Kona Gold Solutions is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Kona Gold Solutions in the sector have low bargaining power. Kona Gold Solutions has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Kona Gold Solutions to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Kona Gold Solutions
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Kona Gold Solutions does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Diverse revenue streams
– Kona Gold Solutions is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided Kona Gold Solutions 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Kona Gold Solutions 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Kona Gold Solutions comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Kona Gold Solutions has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Kona Gold Solutions staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses of Kona Gold Solutions | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Kona Gold Solutions are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Kona Gold Solutions is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Kona Gold Solutions to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Kona Gold Solutions has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Kona Gold Solutions even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Kona Gold Solutions 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 industry using digital technology.
High dependence on Kona Gold Solutions ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Kona Gold Solutions still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Kona Gold Solutions has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Kona Gold Solutions needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Kona Gold Solutions has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Need for greater diversity
– Kona Gold Solutions 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Kona Gold Solutions 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 industry.
Employees’ less understanding of Kona Gold Solutions strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Kona Gold Solutions 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Kona Gold Solutions is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the industry, but Kona Gold Solutions needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Kona Gold Solutions to focus more on services in the industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Kona Gold Solutions, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Kona Gold Solutions has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Kona Gold Solutions Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Kona Gold Solutions are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Kona Gold Solutions 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Kona Gold Solutions in the industry. Now Kona Gold Solutions can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Kona Gold Solutions has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help Kona Gold Solutions to build a more holistic ecosystem for Kona Gold Solutions products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Kona Gold Solutions 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. Kona Gold Solutions 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Kona Gold Solutions can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Kona Gold Solutions has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Kona Gold Solutions to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Kona Gold Solutions to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Kona Gold Solutions 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 industry.
Loyalty marketing
– Kona Gold Solutions 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Kona Gold Solutions 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.
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. Kona Gold Solutions can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Kona Gold Solutions 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 Kona Gold Solutions to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Kona Gold Solutions 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Kona Gold Solutions in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Threats Kona Gold Solutions External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Kona Gold Solutions are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Kona Gold Solutions 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 industry.
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.
Environmental challenges
– Kona Gold Solutions 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. Kona Gold Solutions can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
Regulatory challenges
– Kona Gold Solutions 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 industry regulations.
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 Kona Gold Solutions.
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. Kona Gold Solutions needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Kona Gold Solutions 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.
Increasing wage structure of Kona Gold Solutions
– 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 Kona Gold Solutions.
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 Kona Gold Solutions business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Kona Gold Solutions has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Kona Gold Solutions needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Kona Gold Solutions 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 Kona Gold Solutions prominent markets.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Kona Gold Solutions with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Kona Gold Solutions 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 industry and other sectors.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Kona Gold Solutions Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Kona Gold Solutions 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 Kona Gold Solutions 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 Kona Gold Solutions 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 Kona Gold Solutions 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 Kona Gold Solutions needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
