Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Emperor Watch & Jewellery is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Emperor Watch & Jewellery
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Emperor Watch & Jewellery can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Emperor Watch & Jewellery, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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 Emperor Watch & Jewellery can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Emperor Watch & Jewellery
2. Improving business portfolio management of Emperor Watch & Jewellery
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Hong Kong
4. Making a Retail (Specialty) sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Emperor Watch & Jewellery
Strengths of Emperor Watch & Jewellery | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Emperor Watch & Jewellery are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Emperor Watch & Jewellery has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Retail (Specialty) industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Emperor Watch & Jewellery have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Emperor Watch & Jewellery in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Emperor Watch & Jewellery has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Emperor Watch & Jewellery to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Emperor Watch & Jewellery comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Retail (Specialty) 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.
Ability to lead change in Retail (Specialty)
– Emperor Watch & Jewellery is one of the leading players in the Retail (Specialty) industry in Hong Kong. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Retail (Specialty) industry in Hong Kong but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Emperor Watch & Jewellery in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Strong track record of project management in the Retail (Specialty) industry
– Emperor Watch & Jewellery is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Retail (Specialty) industry
– Emperor Watch & Jewellery has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Emperor Watch & Jewellery to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Retail (Specialty) industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Emperor Watch & Jewellery to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Retail (Specialty) industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Emperor Watch & Jewellery digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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
– Emperor Watch & Jewellery is one of the leading players in the Retail (Specialty) 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Emperor Watch & Jewellery has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Emperor Watch & Jewellery staying ahead in the Retail (Specialty) industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Analytics focus
– Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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 (Specialty) industry. The technology infrastructure of Hong Kong 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Emperor Watch & Jewellery is present in almost all the verticals within the Retail (Specialty) industry. This has provided Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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.
Learning organization
- Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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 Emperor Watch & Jewellery is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Emperor Watch & Jewellery emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses of Emperor Watch & Jewellery | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Emperor Watch & Jewellery are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Emperor Watch & Jewellery products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Emperor Watch & Jewellery needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Emperor Watch & Jewellery has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Retail (Specialty) industry over the last five years. Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Emperor Watch & Jewellery is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Retail (Specialty) industry, but Emperor Watch & Jewellery needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Emperor Watch & Jewellery to focus more on services in the Retail (Specialty) industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Emperor Watch & Jewellery, in the dynamic environment of Retail (Specialty) industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Emperor Watch & Jewellery has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Employees’ less understanding of Emperor Watch & Jewellery strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Emperor Watch & Jewellery don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Retail (Specialty) industry, Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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 (Specialty) industry using digital technology.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Emperor Watch & Jewellery has some of the most successful models in the Retail (Specialty) industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Emperor Watch & Jewellery should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Emperor Watch & Jewellery is one of the leading players in the Retail (Specialty) industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Retail (Specialty) industry in last five years.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Emperor Watch & Jewellery is just above the Retail (Specialty) 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.
High dependence on Emperor Watch & Jewellery ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Emperor Watch & Jewellery still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Retail (Specialty) industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Emperor Watch & Jewellery has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Emperor Watch & Jewellery Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Emperor Watch & Jewellery are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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 Emperor Watch & Jewellery to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Emperor Watch & Jewellery has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Retail (Specialty) industry. This can help Emperor Watch & Jewellery to build a more holistic ecosystem for Emperor Watch & Jewellery products in the Retail (Specialty) industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Emperor Watch & Jewellery has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Retail (Specialty) sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Emperor Watch & Jewellery to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Emperor Watch & Jewellery to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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 (Specialty) industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Emperor Watch & Jewellery is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Emperor Watch & Jewellery can utilize new technology in the field of Retail (Specialty) industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, 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, Emperor Watch & Jewellery can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Emperor Watch & Jewellery operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Retail (Specialty) sector.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Emperor Watch & Jewellery to increase its market reach. Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Retail (Specialty) industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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. Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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
– Emperor Watch & Jewellery can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Retail (Specialty) 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.
Threats Emperor Watch & Jewellery External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Emperor Watch & Jewellery are -
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
– Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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 (Specialty) industry regulations.
Increasing wage structure of Emperor Watch & Jewellery
– 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 Emperor Watch & Jewellery.
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 Emperor Watch & Jewellery business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Emperor Watch & Jewellery is facing in Retail (Specialty) sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Retail (Specialty) industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Emperor Watch & Jewellery can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Emperor Watch & Jewellery in Retail (Specialty) industry. The Retail (Specialty) 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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 (Specialty) 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. Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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 Emperor Watch & Jewellery in the Retail (Specialty) sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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 Emperor Watch & Jewellery.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Emperor Watch & Jewellery Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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 Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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 Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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 Emperor Watch & Jewellery 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 Emperor Watch & Jewellery needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
