Hunan Friendship&Apolo A (2277) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Retail (Department & Discount)
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Hunan Friendship&Apolo A (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Hunan Friendship&Apolo A is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing transportation and logistics costs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing energy prices, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is backlash against globalization,
wage bills are increasing, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Hunan Friendship&Apolo A can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Hunan Friendship&Apolo A, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Hunan Friendship&Apolo 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.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A
2. Improving business portfolio management of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Retail (Department & Discount) sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A
Strengths of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A are -
Ability to lead change in Retail (Department & Discount)
– Hunan Friendship&Apolo A is one of the leading players in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Hunan Friendship&Apolo A in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Hunan Friendship&Apolo A has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Hunan Friendship&Apolo A to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Hunan Friendship&Apolo A does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Strong track record of project management in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry
– Hunan Friendship&Apolo 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.
Training and development
– Hunan Friendship&Apolo A has one of the best training and development program in Services 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
– Hunan Friendship&Apolo A is present in almost all the verticals within the Retail (Department & Discount) industry. This has provided Hunan Friendship&Apolo 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Hunan Friendship&Apolo A has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Hunan Friendship&Apolo A staying ahead in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Learning organization
- Hunan Friendship&Apolo 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 Hunan Friendship&Apolo A is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Hunan Friendship&Apolo A emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Hunan Friendship&Apolo 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Hunan Friendship&Apolo A has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Hunan Friendship&Apolo 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Hunan Friendship&Apolo A has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Retail (Department & Discount) industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Hunan Friendship&Apolo A is one of the most innovative firm in Retail (Department & Discount) sector.
Weaknesses of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Hunan Friendship&Apolo A needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Hunan Friendship&Apolo A is one of the leading players in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry in last five years.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Hunan Friendship&Apolo A needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Hunan Friendship&Apolo A can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Hunan Friendship&Apolo A is planning to shift buying processes online.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Hunan Friendship&Apolo A has some of the most successful models in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Hunan Friendship&Apolo A should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Hunan Friendship&Apolo A has high operating costs in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Hunan Friendship&Apolo A lucrative customers.
Employees’ less understanding of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Hunan Friendship&Apolo A is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Hunan Friendship&Apolo A to provide better information regarding Retail (Department & Discount) products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Retail (Department & Discount) industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in China, Hunan Friendship&Apolo A is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A is just above the Retail (Department & Discount) 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Retail (Department & Discount) 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.
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 Hunan Friendship&Apolo A supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Hunan Friendship&Apolo A is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Hunan Friendship&Apolo A vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Hunan Friendship&Apolo A Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A are -
Manufacturing automation
– Hunan Friendship&Apolo A can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Retail (Department & Discount) 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Hunan Friendship&Apolo A to increase its market reach. Hunan Friendship&Apolo 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Hunan Friendship&Apolo 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Hunan Friendship&Apolo 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Retail (Department & Discount) industry. This can help Hunan Friendship&Apolo A to build a more holistic ecosystem for Hunan Friendship&Apolo A products in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Retail (Department & Discount) industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Hunan Friendship&Apolo A in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry. Now Hunan Friendship&Apolo A can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Developing new processes and practices
– Hunan Friendship&Apolo A can develop new processes and procedures in Retail (Department & Discount) 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Hunan Friendship&Apolo A has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Retail (Department & Discount) sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Hunan Friendship&Apolo A to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Hunan Friendship&Apolo A 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, Hunan Friendship&Apolo A 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Hunan Friendship&Apolo A 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 Retail (Department & Discount) industry.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Hunan Friendship&Apolo 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 Retail (Department & Discount) industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Buying journey improvements
– Hunan Friendship&Apolo A can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Retail (Department & Discount) 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Hunan Friendship&Apolo A can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Hunan Friendship&Apolo A operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Retail (Department & Discount) sector.
Threats Hunan Friendship&Apolo A External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A are -
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Hunan Friendship&Apolo A in Retail (Department & Discount) industry. The Retail (Department & Discount) 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.
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.
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 Hunan Friendship&Apolo A.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Hunan Friendship&Apolo A has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Hunan Friendship&Apolo A needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Retail (Department & Discount) 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.
Environmental challenges
– Hunan Friendship&Apolo 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. Hunan Friendship&Apolo A can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Hunan Friendship&Apolo A 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 Hunan Friendship&Apolo A prominent markets.
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. Hunan Friendship&Apolo A needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Retail (Department & Discount) industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Hunan Friendship&Apolo A may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Retail (Department & Discount) sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Hunan Friendship&Apolo 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 Retail (Department & Discount) industry.
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 Hunan Friendship&Apolo A in the Retail (Department & Discount) sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Regulatory challenges
– Hunan Friendship&Apolo 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 Retail (Department & Discount) industry regulations.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Hunan Friendship&Apolo A Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Hunan Friendship&Apolo 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 Hunan Friendship&Apolo 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 Hunan Friendship&Apolo 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 Hunan Friendship&Apolo 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 Hunan Friendship&Apolo A needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.