SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Hangzhou Jiebai (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Hangzhou Jiebai is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is increasing trade war between United States & China, wage bills are increasing, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, geopolitical disruptions, increasing energy prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Hangzhou Jiebai can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Hangzhou Jiebai, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Hangzhou Jiebai 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 Hangzhou Jiebai can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Hangzhou Jiebai
2. Improving business portfolio management of Hangzhou Jiebai
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 Hangzhou Jiebai
Strengths of Hangzhou Jiebai | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Hangzhou Jiebai are -
Analytics focus
– Hangzhou Jiebai 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 Retail (Department & Discount) 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry
– Hangzhou Jiebai is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Digital Transformation in Retail (Department & Discount) industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Hangzhou Jiebai digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Hangzhou Jiebai has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Hangzhou Jiebai 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 Hangzhou Jiebai have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Hangzhou Jiebai comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Retail (Department & Discount) 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Hangzhou Jiebai is present in almost all the verticals within the Retail (Department & Discount) industry. This has provided Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
High brand equity
– Hangzhou Jiebai has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Hangzhou Jiebai to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Training and development
– Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Hangzhou Jiebai in Retail (Department & Discount) industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Hangzhou Jiebai has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
Organizational Resilience of Hangzhou Jiebai
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Hangzhou Jiebai does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses of Hangzhou Jiebai | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Hangzhou Jiebai are -
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
Skills based hiring in Retail (Department & Discount) industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Hangzhou Jiebai 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 Hangzhou Jiebai can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Hangzhou Jiebai is planning to shift buying processes online.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Hangzhou Jiebai, in the dynamic environment of Retail (Department & Discount) industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Hangzhou Jiebai has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry, Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Hangzhou Jiebai 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 Hangzhou Jiebai lucrative customers.
High dependence on Hangzhou Jiebai ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Hangzhou Jiebai still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Retail (Department & Discount) industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Hangzhou Jiebai has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Hangzhou Jiebai is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Hangzhou Jiebai 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 Retail (Department & Discount) industry using digital technology.
Lack of clear differentiation of Hangzhou Jiebai products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Hangzhou Jiebai needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Hangzhou Jiebai Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Hangzhou Jiebai are -
Loyalty marketing
– Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Hangzhou Jiebai to increase its market reach. Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
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. Hangzhou Jiebai can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Buying journey improvements
– Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Hangzhou Jiebai 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. Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Hangzhou Jiebai has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Retail (Department & Discount) industry. This can help Hangzhou Jiebai to build a more holistic ecosystem for Hangzhou Jiebai products in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Hangzhou Jiebai 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 Hangzhou Jiebai to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Hangzhou Jiebai to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Hangzhou Jiebai 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 Hangzhou Jiebai to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Hangzhou Jiebai can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Hangzhou Jiebai operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Retail (Department & Discount) sector.
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 Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
Threats Hangzhou Jiebai External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Hangzhou Jiebai are -
Increasing wage structure of Hangzhou Jiebai
– 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 Hangzhou Jiebai.
Environmental challenges
– Hangzhou Jiebai 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. Hangzhou Jiebai can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Retail (Department & Discount) 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. Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
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. Hangzhou Jiebai needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Retail (Department & Discount) industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Hangzhou Jiebai 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 Hangzhou Jiebai prominent markets.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Hangzhou Jiebai is facing in Retail (Department & Discount) sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Hangzhou Jiebai has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Hangzhou Jiebai 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.
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.
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 Hangzhou Jiebai business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Hangzhou Jiebai 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 Retail (Department & Discount) industry and other sectors.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Hangzhou Jiebai Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Hangzhou Jiebai 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 Hangzhou Jiebai 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 Hangzhou Jiebai 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 Hangzhou Jiebai 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 Hangzhou Jiebai needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.