Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing energy prices, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, technology disruption, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
increasing commodity prices, there is backlash against globalization, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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 Jinling Sports Equipment can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment
2. Improving business portfolio management of Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Recreational Products sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment
Strengths of Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Recreational Products industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Digital Transformation in Recreational Products industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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 Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Training and development
– Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment is one of the leading players in the Recreational Products 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Recreational Products industry
– Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment in the Consumer Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Learning organization
- Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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 Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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.
High brand equity
– Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to lead change in Recreational Products
– Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment is one of the leading players in the Recreational Products industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Recreational Products industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Weaknesses of Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment are -
High bargaining power of channel partners in Recreational Products industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in China, Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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 Recreational Products industry.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment, in the dynamic environment of Recreational Products industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of China, Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment has some of the most successful models in the Recreational Products industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Skills based hiring in Recreational Products industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment has high operating costs in the Recreational Products industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment lucrative customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Recreational Products 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 Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Recreational Products industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Recreational Products industry over the last five years. Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment is one of the leading players in the Recreational Products industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Recreational Products industry in last five years.
Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment are -
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Recreational Products industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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 Jinling Sports Equipment 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Recreational Products sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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 Recreational Products 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. Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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 Jinling Sports Equipment 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Recreational Products industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Buying journey improvements
– Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Recreational Products 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment can develop new processes and procedures in Recreational Products 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.
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 Jinling Sports Equipment can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Recreational Products sector.
Threats Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment are -
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 Jinling Sports Equipment 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.
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 Jinling Sports Equipment in the Recreational Products sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Recreational Products industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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 Recreational Products industry.
Increasing wage structure of Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment
– 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 Jinling Sports Equipment.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Recreational Products industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Recreational Products 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment in Recreational Products industry. The Recreational Products 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.
Environmental challenges
– Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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 Jinling Sports Equipment can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Recreational Products 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 Jinling Sports Equipment.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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 Recreational Products industry and other sectors.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Recreational Products industry are lowering. It can presents Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Recreational Products sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment 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 Jinling Sports Equipment 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 Jinling Sports Equipment 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 Jinling Sports Equipment 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 Jinling Sports Equipment needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.