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 – digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing commodity prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing energy prices, technology disruption, 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 -

Innovation driven organization

– Meisheng Cultural & Creative is one of the most innovative firm in Apparel/Accessories sector.

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.

Analytics focus

– Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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 Apparel/Accessories 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.

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.

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.

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.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Meisheng Cultural & Creative in Apparel/Accessories industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Highly skilled collaborators

– Meisheng Cultural & Creative has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Apparel/Accessories industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Meisheng Cultural & Creative have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

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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 -

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.

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.

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.

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.

No frontier risks strategy

– From the 10K / annual statement of Meisheng Cultural & Creative, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Apparel/Accessories 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.

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the Apparel/Accessories industry, Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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.

Increasing silos among functional specialists

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

High dependence on Meisheng Cultural & Creative ‘s star products

– The top 2 products and services of Meisheng Cultural & Creative still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Apparel/Accessories industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Meisheng Cultural & Creative has relatively successful track record of launching new products.

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.

Lack of clear differentiation of Meisheng Cultural & Creative products

– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Meisheng Cultural & Creative needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.

Aligning sales with marketing

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

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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 -

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.

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.

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.

Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Apparel/Accessories industry

– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Meisheng Cultural & Creative in the Apparel/Accessories industry. Now Meisheng Cultural & Creative can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.

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.

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.

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– consumer behavior has changed in the Apparel/Accessories industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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. Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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.

Finding new ways to collaborate

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

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.

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.

Lowering marketing communication costs

– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Meisheng Cultural & Creative in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Apparel/Accessories industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.

Creating value in data economy

– The success of analytics program of Meisheng Cultural & Creative has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Apparel/Accessories industry. This can help Meisheng Cultural & Creative to build a more holistic ecosystem for Meisheng Cultural & Creative products in the Apparel/Accessories industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, 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.

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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 -

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.

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.

Easy access to finance

– Easy access to finance in Apparel/Accessories industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Meisheng Cultural & Creative can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.

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 Meisheng Cultural & Creative in the Apparel/Accessories sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for 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.

Barriers of entry lowering

– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Apparel/Accessories industry are lowering. It can presents Meisheng Cultural & Creative with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Apparel/Accessories sector.

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

– 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.

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. Meisheng Cultural & Creative 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 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.

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.

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.

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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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