Bowl America Incorporated SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

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

The Bowl America Incorporated is one of the leading companies in its industry. Bowl America Incorporated maintains its prominent position in market by critically analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis a highly interactive process and requires effective coordination among various departments within the firm 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 known as SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix enables the managers of the Bowl America Incorporated to develop four types of strategies:

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

Bowl America Incorporated swot analysis / matrix

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The main purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a company can utilize to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Bowl America Incorporated strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Bowl America Incorporated SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Bowl America Incorporated – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading companies in its industry, Bowl America Incorporated 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 Bowl America Incorporated are –

Read - Bowl America Incorporated Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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Superb Performance in New Markets – Bowl America Incorporated has built expertise at entering new markets and making success of them. The expansion has helped the organization to build new revenue stream and diversify the economic cycle risk in the markets it operates in.
Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
Reliable suppliers – It has a strong base of reliable supplier of raw material thus enabling the company to overcome any supply chain bottlenecks.
High level of customer satisfaction – the company with its dedicated customer relationship management department has able to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction among present customers and good brand equity among the potential customers.
Strong Free Cash Flow – Bowl America Incorporated has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Bowl America Incorporated 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 Brand Portfolio – Over the years Bowl America Incorporated has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Bowl America Incorporated just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Bowl America Incorporated products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.

Weakness of Bowl America Incorporated – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Bowl America Incorporated can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where a firm can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

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The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of Bowl America Incorporated are below the industry average.
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.
High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Bowl America Incorporated has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Bowl America Incorporated needs to put more money in technology to integrate the processes across the board. Right now the investment in technologies is not at par with the vision of the company.
The marketing of the products left a lot to be desired. Even though the product is a success in terms of sale but its positioning and unique selling proposition is not clearly defined which can lead to the attacks in this segment from the competitors.
Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though Bowl America Incorporated is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.

Opportunities for Bowl America Incorporated – External Strategic Factors

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Decreasing cost of transportation because of lower shipping prices can also bring down the cost of Bowl America Incorporated’s products thus providing an opportunity to the company - either to boost its profitability or pass on the benefits to the customers to gain market share.
The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Bowl America Incorporated to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
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 Bowl America Incorporated. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
Stable free cash flow provides opportunities to invest in adjacent product segments. With more cash in bank the company can invest in new technologies as well as in new products segments. This should open a window of opportunity for Bowl America Incorporated in other product categories.
The new technology provides an opportunity to Bowl America Incorporated 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.
Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Bowl America Incorporated products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of Bowl America Incorporated.
The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as Bowl America Incorporated to increase its profitability.

Threats Bowl America Incorporated Facing - External Strategic Factors

Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Bowl America Incorporated profitability.
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.
Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Bowl America Incorporated
Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.
Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for Bowl America Incorporated in those markets.
The company can face lawsuits in various markets given - different laws and continuous fluctuations regarding product standards in those markets.
Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
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.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Bowl America Incorporated

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 Bowl America Incorporated
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 Bowl America Incorporated

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 Bowl America Incorporated 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 Bowl America Incorporated

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

You can email us to get an example document of Weighted SWOT analysis.

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)