SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Jiangsu Sunshine (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Jiangsu Sunshine is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing transportation and logistics costs, geopolitical disruptions, increasing commodity prices, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
technology disruption, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Jiangsu Sunshine can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Jiangsu Sunshine, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Jiangsu Sunshine 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 Jiangsu Sunshine can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Jiangsu Sunshine
2. Improving business portfolio management of Jiangsu Sunshine
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 Jiangsu Sunshine
Strengths of Jiangsu Sunshine | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Jiangsu Sunshine are -
High brand equity
– Jiangsu Sunshine has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Jiangsu Sunshine to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Apparel/Accessories industry
– Jiangsu Sunshine has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Jiangsu Sunshine to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Apparel/Accessories industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Jiangsu Sunshine to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– Jiangsu Sunshine is one of the most innovative firm in Apparel/Accessories sector.
Strong track record of project management in the Apparel/Accessories industry
– Jiangsu Sunshine is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Jiangsu Sunshine in the Consumer Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Jiangsu Sunshine has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Jiangsu Sunshine to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Jiangsu Sunshine has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
Training and development
– Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Jiangsu Sunshine has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Jiangsu Sunshine 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 recruit top talent
– Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
Organizational Resilience of Jiangsu Sunshine
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Jiangsu Sunshine does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses of Jiangsu Sunshine | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Jiangsu Sunshine are -
Employees’ less understanding of Jiangsu Sunshine strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Jiangsu Sunshine 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 Jiangsu Sunshine can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Jiangsu Sunshine is planning to shift buying processes online.
Skills based hiring in Apparel/Accessories industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Jiangsu Sunshine products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Jiangsu Sunshine needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Jiangsu Sunshine is one of the leading players in the Apparel/Accessories industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Apparel/Accessories industry in last five years.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Jiangsu Sunshine is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Apparel/Accessories industry, but Jiangsu Sunshine needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Jiangsu Sunshine to focus more on services in the Apparel/Accessories industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of China, Jiangsu Sunshine needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Need for greater diversity
– Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Jiangsu Sunshine has some of the most successful models in the Apparel/Accessories industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Jiangsu Sunshine 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 Jiangsu Sunshine, 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.
Jiangsu Sunshine Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Jiangsu Sunshine are -
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Jiangsu Sunshine to increase its market reach. Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Jiangsu Sunshine can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Jiangsu Sunshine can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Jiangsu Sunshine operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Apparel/Accessories sector.
Buying journey improvements
– Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
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 Jiangsu Sunshine in the Apparel/Accessories industry. Now Jiangsu Sunshine can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Developing new processes and practices
– Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Jiangsu Sunshine has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Jiangsu Sunshine to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Jiangsu Sunshine 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 Jiangsu Sunshine to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Jiangsu Sunshine to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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. Jiangsu Sunshine 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. Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
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 Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
Threats Jiangsu Sunshine External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Jiangsu Sunshine are -
Increasing wage structure of Jiangsu Sunshine
– 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 Jiangsu Sunshine.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
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 Jiangsu Sunshine 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 Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Jiangsu Sunshine 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 Apparel/Accessories industry regulations.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Jiangsu Sunshine 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 Jiangsu Sunshine.
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.
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. Jiangsu Sunshine 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.
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. Jiangsu Sunshine needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Apparel/Accessories industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Jiangsu Sunshine has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Apparel/Accessories industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Jiangsu Sunshine needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Apparel/Accessories 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
– Jiangsu Sunshine 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. Jiangsu Sunshine can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Apparel/Accessories industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Jiangsu Sunshine Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Jiangsu Sunshine 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 Jiangsu Sunshine 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 Jiangsu Sunshine 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 Jiangsu Sunshine 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 Jiangsu Sunshine needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.