SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Cosmopolitan Intl (Hong Kong)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Cosmopolitan Intl is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, there is backlash against globalization, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, wage bills are increasing,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Cosmopolitan Intl
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Cosmopolitan Intl can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Cosmopolitan Intl, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Cosmopolitan Intl 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 Cosmopolitan Intl can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Cosmopolitan Intl
2. Improving business portfolio management of Cosmopolitan Intl
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Hong Kong
4. Making a Air Courier sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Cosmopolitan Intl
Strengths of Cosmopolitan Intl | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Cosmopolitan Intl are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Cosmopolitan Intl has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Cosmopolitan Intl 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Cosmopolitan Intl is one of the most innovative firm in Air Courier sector.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Cosmopolitan Intl comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Air Courier 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
– Cosmopolitan Intl is present in almost all the verticals within the Air Courier industry. This has provided Cosmopolitan Intl 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Cosmopolitan Intl in Air Courier industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Air Courier industry
– Cosmopolitan Intl has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Cosmopolitan Intl to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Air Courier industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Cosmopolitan Intl to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Training and development
– Cosmopolitan Intl has one of the best training and development program in Transportation 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.
Digital Transformation in Air Courier industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Cosmopolitan Intl digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Cosmopolitan Intl 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 recruit top talent
– Cosmopolitan Intl is one of the leading players in the Air Courier industry in Hong Kong. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Hong Kong. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Strong track record of project management in the Air Courier industry
– Cosmopolitan Intl is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Learning organization
- Cosmopolitan Intl 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 Cosmopolitan Intl is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Cosmopolitan Intl emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High brand equity
– Cosmopolitan Intl has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Cosmopolitan Intl to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Weaknesses of Cosmopolitan Intl | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Cosmopolitan Intl are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Cosmopolitan Intl has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Air Courier industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Skills based hiring in Air Courier industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Cosmopolitan Intl 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Cosmopolitan Intl has some of the most successful models in the Air Courier industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Cosmopolitan Intl should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Cosmopolitan Intl is one of the leading players in the Air Courier industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Air Courier industry in last five years.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Cosmopolitan Intl has high operating costs in the Air Courier industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Cosmopolitan Intl lucrative customers.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Cosmopolitan Intl supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Cosmopolitan Intl is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Cosmopolitan Intl vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Cosmopolitan Intl, in the dynamic environment of Air Courier industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Cosmopolitan Intl has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Air Courier industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Hong Kong, Cosmopolitan Intl 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 Air Courier industry.
High dependence on Cosmopolitan Intl ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Cosmopolitan Intl still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Air Courier industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Cosmopolitan Intl has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Cosmopolitan Intl has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Air Courier industry over the last five years. Cosmopolitan Intl 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Cosmopolitan Intl needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Air Courier industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Cosmopolitan Intl can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Cosmopolitan Intl is planning to shift buying processes online.
Cosmopolitan Intl Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Cosmopolitan Intl are -
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Air Courier industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Cosmopolitan Intl can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Cosmopolitan Intl has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Air Courier industry. This can help Cosmopolitan Intl to build a more holistic ecosystem for Cosmopolitan Intl products in the Air Courier 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 Air Courier industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Cosmopolitan Intl 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. Cosmopolitan Intl 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 Cosmopolitan Intl 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.
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 Cosmopolitan Intl 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Cosmopolitan Intl 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 Cosmopolitan Intl to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Air Courier industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Cosmopolitan Intl in the Air Courier industry. Now Cosmopolitan Intl can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Cosmopolitan Intl is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Cosmopolitan Intl can utilize new technology in the field of Air Courier industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Cosmopolitan Intl can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Cosmopolitan Intl to increase its market reach. Cosmopolitan Intl 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Cosmopolitan Intl 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Cosmopolitan Intl 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 Air Courier industry.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Cosmopolitan Intl in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Air Courier industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Threats Cosmopolitan Intl External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Cosmopolitan Intl are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Cosmopolitan Intl is facing in Air Courier sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Cosmopolitan Intl in the Air Courier sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Cosmopolitan Intl 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 Air Courier industry and other sectors.
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. Cosmopolitan Intl 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Air Courier industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Cosmopolitan Intl can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Environmental challenges
– Cosmopolitan Intl 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. Cosmopolitan Intl can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Air Courier industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Cosmopolitan Intl in Air Courier industry. The Air Courier 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.
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 Cosmopolitan Intl.
Regulatory challenges
– Cosmopolitan Intl 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 Air Courier industry regulations.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Cosmopolitan Intl has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Air Courier industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Cosmopolitan Intl needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Air Courier 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, Cosmopolitan Intl may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Air Courier sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Cosmopolitan Intl 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 Air Courier industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Cosmopolitan Intl Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Cosmopolitan Intl 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 Cosmopolitan Intl 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 Cosmopolitan Intl 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 Cosmopolitan Intl 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 Cosmopolitan Intl needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.