Destination Maternity Corporation SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

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

The Destination Maternity Corporation is one of the leading companies in its industry. Destination Maternity Corporation maintains its dominant 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 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 helps the managers of the Destination Maternity Corporation 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 company can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Destination Maternity Corporation strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Destination Maternity Corporation SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Destination Maternity Corporation – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading companies in its industry, Destination Maternity Corporation has numerous strengths that help 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 Destination Maternity Corporation are –

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• Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – Destination Maternity Corporation is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
• Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Destination Maternity Corporation 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.
• Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
• Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Destination Maternity Corporation products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.
• 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 Brand Portfolio – Over the years Destination Maternity Corporation has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Destination Maternity Corporation just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
• Strong Free Cash Flow – Destination Maternity Corporation has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
• 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.

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Weakness of Destination Maternity Corporation – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Destination Maternity Corporation 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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• Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Destination Maternity Corporation 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.
• Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though Destination Maternity Corporation is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
• Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though Destination Maternity Corporation is spending above the industry average on Research and Development, it has not been able to compete with the leading players in the industry in terms of innovation. It has come across as a mature firm looking forward to bring out products based on tested features in the market.
• 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 Destination Maternity Corporation is not very good at demand forecasting thus end up keeping higher inventory both in-house and in channel.
• The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of Destination Maternity Corporation are below the industry average.
• Limited success outside core business – Even though Destination Maternity Corporation is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
• The company has not being able to tackle the challenges present by the new entrants in the segment and has lost small market share in the niche categories. Destination Maternity Corporation has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.

Opportunities for Destination Maternity Corporation – External Strategic Factors

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• Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for Destination Maternity Corporation to capture new customers and increase its market share.
• 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 Destination Maternity Corporation in other product categories.
• The new technology provides an opportunity to Destination Maternity Corporation 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.
• The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Destination Maternity Corporation to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
• New environmental policies – The new opportunities will create a level playing field for all the players in the industry. It represent a great opportunity for Destination Maternity Corporation to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
• Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of Destination Maternity Corporation.
• New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Destination Maternity Corporation . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
• Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Destination Maternity Corporation an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.

Threats Destination Maternity Corporation Facing - External Strategic Factors

• Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Destination Maternity Corporation profitability.
• 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.
• Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Destination Maternity Corporation
• As the company is operating in numerous countries it is exposed to currency fluctuations especially given the volatile political climate in number of markets across the world.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 Destination Maternity Corporation   in those markets.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Destination Maternity Corporation

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 Destination Maternity Corporation
• 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 Destination Maternity Corporation

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 Destination Maternity Corporation 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 Destination Maternity Corporation

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)