SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Casino Guichard (France)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Casino Guichard is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing commodity prices, technology disruption, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Casino Guichard can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Casino Guichard, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Casino Guichard 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 Casino Guichard can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Casino Guichard
2. Improving business portfolio management of Casino Guichard
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in France
4. Making a Retail (Grocery) sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Casino Guichard
Strengths of Casino Guichard | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Casino Guichard are -
Innovation driven organization
– Casino Guichard is one of the most innovative firm in Retail (Grocery) sector.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Casino Guichard in Retail (Grocery) industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Casino Guichard 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.
Learning organization
- Casino Guichard 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 Casino Guichard is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Casino Guichard emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Casino Guichard
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Casino Guichard does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Casino Guichard has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Retail (Grocery) industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Casino Guichard have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Casino Guichard 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Retail (Grocery) industry
– Casino Guichard is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Casino Guichard comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Retail (Grocery) 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.
Digital Transformation in Retail (Grocery) industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Casino Guichard digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Casino Guichard 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.
Ability to lead change in Retail (Grocery)
– Casino Guichard is one of the leading players in the Retail (Grocery) industry in France. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Retail (Grocery) industry in France but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Casino Guichard in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Analytics focus
– Casino Guichard 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 (Grocery) industry. The technology infrastructure of France 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.
Weaknesses of Casino Guichard | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Casino Guichard are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Casino Guichard products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Casino Guichard needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Retail (Grocery) industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in France, Casino Guichard 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 (Grocery) industry.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Casino Guichard is one of the leading players in the Retail (Grocery) industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Retail (Grocery) industry in last five years.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Casino Guichard is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Retail (Grocery) industry, but Casino Guichard needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Casino Guichard to focus more on services in the Retail (Grocery) industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Casino Guichard, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Retail (Grocery) 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Casino Guichard has high operating costs in the Retail (Grocery) industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Casino Guichard lucrative customers.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Casino Guichard 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 (Grocery) industry using digital technology.
Need for greater diversity
– Casino Guichard 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.
Skills based hiring in Retail (Grocery) industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Casino Guichard 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Casino Guichard has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Casino Guichard has some of the most successful models in the Retail (Grocery) industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Casino Guichard should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Casino Guichard Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Casino Guichard are -
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Retail (Grocery) industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Casino Guichard in the Retail (Grocery) industry. Now Casino Guichard can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Casino Guichard 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 Casino Guichard has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Retail (Grocery) industry. This can help Casino Guichard to build a more holistic ecosystem for Casino Guichard products in the Retail (Grocery) industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Retail (Grocery) industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Casino Guichard 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. Casino Guichard 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Casino Guichard can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Retail (Grocery) 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Casino Guichard 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 (Grocery) industry.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Casino Guichard 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 Casino Guichard to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Casino Guichard can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Casino Guichard 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
– Casino Guichard 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.
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 Casino Guichard 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Casino Guichard can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help Casino Guichard to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Casino Guichard to increase its market reach. Casino Guichard 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.
Threats Casino Guichard External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Casino Guichard are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Casino Guichard 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 (Grocery) industry and other sectors.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Casino Guichard 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.
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 Casino Guichard in the Retail (Grocery) sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Casino Guichard 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 (Grocery) industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Casino Guichard has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Retail (Grocery) industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Casino Guichard needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Retail (Grocery) 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Casino Guichard 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 (Grocery) sector.
Regulatory challenges
– Casino Guichard 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 (Grocery) industry regulations.
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 Casino Guichard.
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. Casino Guichard needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Retail (Grocery) industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Retail (Grocery) industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Casino Guichard can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing wage structure of Casino Guichard
– 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 Casino Guichard.
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 Casino Guichard Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Casino Guichard 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 Casino Guichard 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 Casino Guichard 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 Casino Guichard 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 Casino Guichard needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.