Muyuan Foodstuff A (2714) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Muyuan Foodstuff A (China)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Muyuan Foodstuff A is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – wage bills are increasing, there is backlash against globalization, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing commodity prices, geopolitical disruptions, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Muyuan Foodstuff A

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

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

The strengths of Muyuan Foodstuff A are -

Learning organization

- Muyuan Foodstuff A 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 Muyuan Foodstuff A is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Muyuan Foodstuff A emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Innovation driven organization

– Muyuan Foodstuff A is one of the most innovative firm in Fish/Livestock sector.

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

– Muyuan Foodstuff A has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Muyuan Foodstuff A staying ahead in the Fish/Livestock industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.

Successful track record of launching new products

– Muyuan Foodstuff A has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Muyuan Foodstuff A 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.

Analytics focus

– Muyuan Foodstuff 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 Fish/Livestock industry. The technology infrastructure of China 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.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy of Muyuan Foodstuff A comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Fish/Livestock 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.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Muyuan Foodstuff A in Fish/Livestock industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

Ability to lead change in Fish/Livestock

– Muyuan Foodstuff A is one of the leading players in the Fish/Livestock industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Fish/Livestock industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Muyuan Foodstuff A in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.

High switching costs

– The high switching costs that Muyuan Foodstuff A 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.

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Muyuan Foodstuff A 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.

Strong track record of project management in the Fish/Livestock industry

– Muyuan Foodstuff 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.

Diverse revenue streams

– Muyuan Foodstuff A is present in almost all the verticals within the Fish/Livestock industry. This has provided Muyuan Foodstuff 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.

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

The weaknesses of Muyuan Foodstuff A are -

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the Fish/Livestock industry, Muyuan Foodstuff A 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.

No frontier risks strategy

– From the 10K / annual statement of Muyuan Foodstuff A, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Fish/Livestock 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 harness new channels of communication

– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Muyuan Foodstuff A is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Muyuan Foodstuff A to provide better information regarding Fish/Livestock products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.

Low market penetration in new markets

– Outside its home market of China, Muyuan Foodstuff A needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.

High cash cycle compare to competitors

Muyuan Foodstuff A has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Fish/Livestock industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Muyuan Foodstuff A is just above the Fish/Livestock 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.

Skills based hiring in Fish/Livestock industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Muyuan Foodstuff 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.

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, Muyuan Foodstuff A 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 Fish/Livestock industry using digital technology.

Slow to strategic competitive environment developments

– As Muyuan Foodstuff A is one of the leading players in the Fish/Livestock industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Fish/Livestock industry in last five years.

Ability to respond to the competition

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

Lack of clear differentiation of Muyuan Foodstuff A products

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

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

The opportunities of Muyuan Foodstuff A are -

Loyalty marketing

– Muyuan Foodstuff 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.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Muyuan Foodstuff 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.

Redefining models of collaboration and team work

– As explained in the weaknesses section, Muyuan Foodstuff A is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Muyuan Foodstuff A can utilize new technology in the field of Fish/Livestock industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.

Lowering marketing communication costs

– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Muyuan Foodstuff 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 Fish/Livestock industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.

Reforming the budgeting process

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

Increase in government spending

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

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– consumer behavior has changed in the Fish/Livestock industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Muyuan Foodstuff A 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. Muyuan Foodstuff A 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.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– Muyuan Foodstuff A has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Fish/Livestock sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Muyuan Foodstuff A to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Muyuan Foodstuff A to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Muyuan Foodstuff A 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 Muyuan Foodstuff A to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

Leveraging digital technologies

– Muyuan Foodstuff 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.

Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Fish/Livestock industry

– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Muyuan Foodstuff A in the Fish/Livestock industry. Now Muyuan Foodstuff A can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.

Better consumer reach

– The expansion of the 5G network will help Muyuan Foodstuff A to increase its market reach. Muyuan Foodstuff A 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.

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. Muyuan Foodstuff A can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

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Threats Muyuan Foodstuff A External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Muyuan Foodstuff A are -

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.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Muyuan Foodstuff 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.

Regulatory challenges

– Muyuan Foodstuff 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 Fish/Livestock 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 Muyuan Foodstuff A.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Muyuan Foodstuff A in Fish/Livestock industry. The Fish/Livestock 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 Fish/Livestock industry are lowering. It can presents Muyuan Foodstuff A with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Fish/Livestock sector.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Muyuan Foodstuff A has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Fish/Livestock industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Muyuan Foodstuff A needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Fish/Livestock 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.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Muyuan Foodstuff 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 Fish/Livestock industry.

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. Muyuan Foodstuff 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.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Muyuan Foodstuff A is facing in Fish/Livestock 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 Muyuan Foodstuff A in the Fish/Livestock sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

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.

Environmental challenges

– Muyuan Foodstuff A 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. Muyuan Foodstuff A can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Fish/Livestock industry.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Muyuan Foodstuff A Template, Example

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

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