Ming Fai Intl (3828) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Personal & Household Prods.
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Ming Fai Intl (Hong Kong)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Ming Fai Intl is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing energy prices, geopolitical disruptions, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, technology disruption, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, wage bills are increasing,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Ming Fai Intl can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Ming Fai Intl, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Ming Fai 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 Ming Fai Intl can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Ming Fai Intl
2. Improving business portfolio management of Ming Fai Intl
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Hong Kong
4. Making a Personal & Household Prods. sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Ming Fai Intl
Strengths of Ming Fai Intl | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Ming Fai Intl are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Ming Fai Intl 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.
Analytics focus
– Ming Fai Intl 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 Personal & Household Prods. 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.
Ability to lead change in Personal & Household Prods.
– Ming Fai Intl is one of the leading players in the Personal & Household Prods. industry in Hong Kong. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Personal & Household Prods. industry in Hong Kong but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Ming Fai Intl in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Ming Fai Intl comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Personal & Household Prods. 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.
Organizational Resilience of Ming Fai Intl
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Ming Fai Intl does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Innovation driven organization
– Ming Fai Intl is one of the most innovative firm in Personal & Household Prods. sector.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Ming Fai Intl in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Ming Fai Intl has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Ming Fai Intl to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Ming Fai Intl has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Ming Fai 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Personal & Household Prods. industry
– Ming Fai Intl has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Ming Fai Intl to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Personal & Household Prods. industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Ming Fai Intl to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Personal & Household Prods. industry
– Ming Fai 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.
Digital Transformation in Personal & Household Prods. industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Ming Fai Intl digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Ming Fai 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.
Learning organization
- Ming Fai 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 Ming Fai Intl is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Ming Fai Intl emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses of Ming Fai Intl | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Ming Fai Intl are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Ming Fai 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 Personal & Household Prods. industry over the last five years. Ming Fai 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 Ming Fai Intl needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Personal & Household Prods. industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Ming Fai Intl can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Ming Fai Intl is planning to shift buying processes online.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Ming Fai Intl 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 Personal & Household Prods. industry using digital technology.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Ming Fai Intl has some of the most successful models in the Personal & Household Prods. industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Ming Fai Intl should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Need for greater diversity
– Ming Fai Intl 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Ming Fai Intl is just above the Personal & Household Prods. industry average. It needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Skills based hiring in Personal & Household Prods. industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Ming Fai 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Ming Fai Intl is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Personal & Household Prods. industry, but Ming Fai Intl needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Ming Fai Intl to focus more on services in the Personal & Household Prods. industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Personal & Household Prods. industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Hong Kong, Ming Fai 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 Personal & Household Prods. industry.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Personal & Household Prods. industry, Ming Fai Intl 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Ming Fai Intl strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Ming Fai Intl 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.
Ming Fai Intl Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Ming Fai Intl are -
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Ming Fai 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 Ming Fai Intl to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Ming Fai 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 Personal & Household Prods. industry.
Loyalty marketing
– Ming Fai 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Ming Fai Intl has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Personal & Household Prods. sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Ming Fai Intl to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Ming Fai Intl to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Personal & Household Prods. industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Ming Fai Intl can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Ming Fai Intl 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Ming Fai Intl 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Ming Fai 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 Personal & Household Prods. industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Ming Fai Intl can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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. Ming Fai Intl can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Developing new processes and practices
– Ming Fai Intl can develop new processes and procedures in Personal & Household Prods. 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Ming Fai Intl is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Ming Fai Intl can utilize new technology in the field of Personal & Household Prods. industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Manufacturing automation
– Ming Fai Intl can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Personal & Household Prods. sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Threats Ming Fai Intl External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Ming Fai Intl are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Ming Fai Intl has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Personal & Household Prods. industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Ming Fai Intl needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Personal & Household Prods. 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, Ming Fai 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 Personal & Household Prods. sector.
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. Ming Fai Intl needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Personal & Household Prods. industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Ming Fai Intl in the Personal & Household Prods. sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Ming Fai 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 Personal & Household Prods. industry.
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Ming Fai 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.
Increasing wage structure of Ming Fai Intl
– 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 Ming Fai Intl.
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.
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 Ming Fai Intl.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Ming Fai 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 Personal & Household Prods. industry and other sectors.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Ming Fai Intl in Personal & Household Prods. industry. The Personal & Household Prods. 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Ming Fai Intl can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate Ming Fai Intl prominent markets.
Environmental challenges
– Ming Fai 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. Ming Fai Intl can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Personal & Household Prods. industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Ming Fai Intl Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Ming Fai 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 Ming Fai 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 Ming Fai 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 Ming Fai 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 Ming Fai Intl needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.