Weingarten Realty Investors SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

SWOT analysis is a vital strategic planning tool that can be used by Weingarten Realty Investors managers to do a situational analysis of the company . It is a handy technique to understand the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Weingarten Realty Investors is facing in its current business environment.

The Weingarten Realty Investors is one of the leading companies in its industry. Weingarten Realty Investors maintains its prominent position in market by critically analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis.  SWOT analysis an immensenly interactive process and requires effective coordination among various departments within the organization such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.


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The SWOT Analysis framework helps an organization to identify the internal strategic factors such as -strengths and weaknesses, & external strategic factors such as - opportunities and threats. It leads to a 2X2 matrix – also called SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix helps the managers of the Weingarten Realty Investors to develop four types of strategies:

• SO (strengths-opportunities) Strategies
• WO (weaknesses-opportunities) Strategies
• ST (strengths-threats) Strategies
•  WT (weaknesses-threats) Strategies

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The core purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a firm can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Weingarten Realty Investors strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Weingarten Realty Investors SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Weingarten Realty Investors – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading companies in its industry, Weingarten Realty Investors has numerous strengths that enable it to thrive in the market place. These strengths not only help it to protect the market share in existing markets but also help in penetrating new markets. Based on Fern Fort University extensive research – some of the strengths of Weingarten Realty Investors are –

Read - Weingarten Realty Investors Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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• Strong dealer community – It has built a culture among distributor & dealers where the dealers not only promote company’s products but also invest in training the sales team to explain to the customer how he/she can extract the maximum benefits out of the products.
• Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
• Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years Weingarten Realty Investors has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Weingarten Realty Investors just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
• Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Weingarten Realty Investors is investing huge resources in training and development of its employees resulting in a workforce that is not only highly skilled but also motivated to achieve more.
• Strong Free Cash Flow – Weingarten Realty Investors has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
• Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
• Strong distribution network – Over the years Weingarten Realty Investors has built a reliable distribution network that can reach majority of its potential market.
• Reliable suppliers – It has a strong base of reliable supplier of raw material thus enabling the company to overcome any supply chain bottlenecks.

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Weakness of Weingarten Realty Investors – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Weingarten Realty Investors can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where an organization can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

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• There are gaps in the product range sold by the company. This lack of choice can give a new competitor a foothold in the market.
• Limited success outside core business – Even though Weingarten Realty Investors is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
• Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though Weingarten Realty Investors is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
• Not very good at product demand forecasting leading to higher rate of missed opportunities compare to its competitors. One of the reason why the days inventory is high compare to its competitors is that Weingarten Realty Investors is not very good at demand forecasting thus end up keeping higher inventory both in-house and in channel.
• Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.
• Financial planning is not done properly and efficiently. The current asset ratio and liquid asset ratios suggest that the company can use the cash more efficiently than what it is doing at present.
• Days inventory is high compare to the competitors – making the company raise more capital to invest in the channel. This can impact the long term growth of Weingarten Realty Investors

Opportunities for Weingarten Realty Investors – External Strategic Factors

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• Organization’s core competencies can be a success in similar other products field. A comparative example could be - GE healthcare research helped it in developing better Oil drilling machines.
• New customers from online channel – Over the past few years the company has invested vast sum of money into the online platform. This investment has opened new sales channel for Weingarten Realty Investors. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
• Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Weingarten Realty Investors products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
• The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Weingarten Realty Investors to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
• New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Weingarten Realty Investors . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
• The new technology provides an opportunity to Weingarten Realty Investors to practices differentiated pricing strategy in the new market. It will enable the firm to maintain its loyal customers with great service and lure new customers through other value oriented propositions.
• Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for Weingarten Realty Investors to capture new customers and increase its market share.
• Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Weingarten Realty Investors an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.

Threats Weingarten Realty Investors Facing - External Strategic Factors

• Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Weingarten Realty Investors
• Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Weingarten Realty Investors profitability.
• Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for Weingarten Realty Investors   in those markets.
• Intense competition – Stable profitability has increased the number of players in the industry over last two years which has put downward pressure on not only profitability but also on overall sales.
• No regular supply of innovative products – Over the years the company has developed numerous products but those are often response to the development by other players. Secondly the supply of new products is not regular thus leading to high and low swings in the sales number over period of time.
• Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
• The demand of the highly profitable products is seasonal in nature and any unlikely event during the peak season may impact the profitability of the company in short to medium term.
• New technologies developed by the competitor or market disruptor could be a serious threat to the industry in medium to long term future.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Weingarten Realty Investors

Although the SWOT analysis is widely used as a strategic planning tool, the analysis does have its share of limitations.

• Certain capabilities or factors of an organization can be both a strength and weakness at the same time. This is one of the major limitations of SWOT analysis . For example changing environmental regulations can be both a threat to company it can also be an opportunity in a sense that it will enable the company to be on a level playing field or at advantage to competitors if it able to develop the products faster than the competitors.
• SWOT does not show how to achieve a competitive advantage, so it must not be an end in itself.
• The matrix is only a starting point for a discussion on how proposed strategies could be implemented. It provided an evaluation window but not an implementation plan based on strategic competitiveness of Weingarten Realty Investors
• SWOT is a static assessment - analysis of status quo with few prospective changes. As circumstances, capabilities, threats, and strategies change, the dynamics of a competitive environment may not be revealed in a single matrix.
• SWOT analysis may lead the firm to overemphasize a single internal or external factor in formulating strategies. There are interrelationships among the key internal and external factors that SWOT does not reveal that may be important in devising strategies.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Weingarten Realty Investors

In light of the above mentioned limitations of the SWOT analysis / matrix, corporate managers decided to provide weightage to each internal strength and weakness of the firm. Organizations also assess the likelihood of events taking place in the coming future and how strong their impact could be on company's performance.

This method is called Weighted SWOT analysis. It is better than doing simplistic SWOT analysis because with Weighted SWOT Analysis Weingarten Realty Investors managers can focus on the most critical factors and discount the non-important one. It also solves the long list problem where organizations ends up making a long list but none of the factors deemed too critical.

Limitation of Weighted SWOT analysis of Weingarten Realty Investors

This approach also suffers from one major drawback - it focus on individual importance of factor rather than how they are collectively important and impact the business holistically.

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Example of Weighted SWOT Analysis

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SWOT Worksheet & Template

If you like to do your own SWOT analysis or want to make your own Weighted SWOT SWOT matrix then feel free to download Fern Fort University SWOT Analysis Template.

References / Citations & Bibliography

• M. E. Porter, Competitive Strategy(New York: Free Press, 1980)
• A. D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1962)
• O. E. Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies(New York: Free Press, 1975);
• L. Wrigley, Divisional Autonomy and Diversification (PhD, Harvard Business School, 1970)
• R. E. White, Generic Business Strategies, Organizational Context and Performance: An Empirical Investigation, Strategic Management Journal7 (1986)