Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media (2181) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Advertising
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, wage bills are increasing, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, technology disruption, geopolitical disruptions, increasing commodity prices,
increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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 Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media
2. Improving business portfolio management of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Advertising sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media
Strengths of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media is one of the leading players in the Advertising 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Advertising 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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.
Ability to lead change in Advertising
– Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media is one of the leading players in the Advertising industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Advertising industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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 Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media in Advertising industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Advertising industry
– Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Advertising industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media is present in almost all the verticals within the Advertising industry. This has provided Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Advertising industry
– Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media staying ahead in the Advertising industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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.
Weaknesses of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media are -
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media is just above the Advertising 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media, in the dynamic environment of Advertising industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media has some of the most successful models in the Advertising industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Advertising 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 decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Advertising industry over the last five years. Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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, Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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 Advertising industry using digital technology.
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 Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Skills based hiring in Advertising industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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 Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High dependence on Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Advertising industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media are -
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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 Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media can develop new processes and procedures in Advertising 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media can utilize new technology in the field of Advertising industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Buying journey improvements
– Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Advertising 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media to increase its market reach. Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Advertising industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media in the Advertising industry. Now Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Advertising industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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. Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Advertising sector.
Threats Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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 Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media
– 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 Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Advertising industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media is facing in Advertising sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
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. Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Advertising industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media in Advertising industry. The Advertising 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.
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. Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Advertising industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Advertising 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
– Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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 Advertising industry.
Environmental challenges
– Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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. Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Advertising industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Advertising industry are lowering. It can presents Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Advertising sector.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Advertising sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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 Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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 Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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 Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media 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 Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.