Meisheng Cultural & Creative (2699) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Meisheng Cultural & Creative (China)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Meisheng Cultural & Creative is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, technology disruption, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, geopolitical disruptions, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Meisheng Cultural & Creative

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

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Strengths of Meisheng Cultural & Creative | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Meisheng Cultural & Creative are -

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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.

High switching costs

– The high switching costs that Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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.

Ability to recruit top talent

– Meisheng Cultural & Creative is one of the leading players in the Apparel/Accessories industry in China. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in China. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.

Diverse revenue streams

– Meisheng Cultural & Creative is present in almost all the verticals within the Apparel/Accessories industry. This has provided Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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.

Organizational Resilience of Meisheng Cultural & Creative

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

High brand equity

– Meisheng Cultural & Creative has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Meisheng Cultural & Creative to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.

Training and development

– Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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 Apparel/Accessories industry

– Meisheng Cultural & Creative is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.

Ability to lead change in Apparel/Accessories

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

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy of Meisheng Cultural & Creative comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Apparel/Accessories 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)

– Meisheng Cultural & Creative has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Meisheng Cultural & Creative staying ahead in the Apparel/Accessories industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

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

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Weaknesses of Meisheng Cultural & Creative | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Meisheng Cultural & Creative are -

Slow to harness new channels of communication

– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Meisheng Cultural & Creative is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Meisheng Cultural & Creative to provide better information regarding Apparel/Accessories 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, Meisheng Cultural & Creative has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Apparel/Accessories industry over the last five years. Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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.

Low market penetration in new markets

– Outside its home market of China, Meisheng Cultural & Creative needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Meisheng Cultural & Creative is just above the Apparel/Accessories 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.

High operating costs

– Compare to the competitors, Meisheng Cultural & Creative has high operating costs in the Apparel/Accessories industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Meisheng Cultural & Creative lucrative customers.

Skills based hiring in Apparel/Accessories industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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.

Employees’ less understanding of Meisheng Cultural & Creative strategy

– From the outside it seems that the employees of Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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.

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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 Apparel/Accessories industry using digital technology.

Interest costs

– Compare to the competition, Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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.

Need for greater diversity

– Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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 dependence on existing supply chain

– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Meisheng Cultural & Creative supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Meisheng Cultural & Creative is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Meisheng Cultural & Creative vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.

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Meisheng Cultural & Creative Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Meisheng Cultural & Creative are -

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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 Apparel/Accessories industry.

Developing new processes and practices

– Meisheng Cultural & Creative can develop new processes and procedures in Apparel/Accessories 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.

Buying journey improvements

– Meisheng Cultural & Creative can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Apparel/Accessories 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.

Redefining models of collaboration and team work

– As explained in the weaknesses section, Meisheng Cultural & Creative is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Meisheng Cultural & Creative can utilize new technology in the field of Apparel/Accessories industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.

Leveraging digital technologies

– Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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

– Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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.

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 Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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

– Meisheng Cultural & Creative can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Apparel/Accessories 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.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

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

Low interest rates

– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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.

Better consumer reach

– The expansion of the 5G network will help Meisheng Cultural & Creative to increase its market reach. Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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. Meisheng Cultural & Creative can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

Reforming the budgeting process

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

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Threats Meisheng Cultural & Creative External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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.

Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins

– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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 Meisheng Cultural & Creative prominent markets.

Environmental challenges

– Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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. Meisheng Cultural & Creative can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Apparel/Accessories industry.

Consumer confidence and its impact on Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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 Apparel/Accessories industry and other sectors.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Meisheng Cultural & Creative is facing in Apparel/Accessories sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Meisheng Cultural & Creative may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Apparel/Accessories sector.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Meisheng Cultural & Creative in Apparel/Accessories industry. The Apparel/Accessories 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.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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 Apparel/Accessories industry.

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 Meisheng Cultural & Creative.

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.

Increasing wage structure of Meisheng Cultural & Creative

– 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 Meisheng Cultural & Creative.

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. Meisheng Cultural & Creative needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Apparel/Accessories industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Meisheng Cultural & Creative Template, Example

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

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