Genuine Parts Company SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

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

The Genuine Parts Company is one of the leading organizatations in its industry. Genuine Parts Company 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 organization such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.

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The SWOT Analysis framework facilitates 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 Genuine Parts Company to develop four types of strategies:

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

Genuine Parts Company swot analysis / matrix

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The central purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a firm can utilize to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Genuine Parts Company strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Genuine Parts Company SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Genuine Parts Company – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading companies in its industry, Genuine Parts Company 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 Genuine Parts Company are –

Read - Genuine Parts Company Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Genuine Parts Company 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 – Genuine Parts Company has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
Reliable suppliers – It has a strong base of reliable supplier of raw material thus enabling the company to overcome any supply chain bottlenecks.
Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years Genuine Parts Company has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Genuine Parts Company just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
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.
Superb Performance in New Markets – Genuine Parts Company 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.
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.

Weakness of Genuine Parts Company – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Genuine Parts Company 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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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 Genuine Parts Company
Limited success outside core business – Even though Genuine Parts Company is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though Genuine Parts Company 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.
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.
Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Genuine Parts Company 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 profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of Genuine Parts Company 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.

Opportunities for Genuine Parts Company – External Strategic Factors

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Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of Genuine Parts Company.
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 Genuine Parts Company. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as Genuine Parts Company to increase its profitability.
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 Genuine Parts Company to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
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.
The new technology provides an opportunity to Genuine Parts Company 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.
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 Genuine Parts Company in other product categories.
The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Genuine Parts Company to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.

Threats Genuine Parts Company Facing - External Strategic Factors

Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to Genuine Parts Company’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.
Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Genuine Parts Company profitability.
Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Genuine Parts Company
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.
The company can face lawsuits in various markets given - different laws and continuous fluctuations regarding product standards in those markets.
Increasing trend toward isolationism in the American economy can lead to similar reaction from other government thus negatively impacting the international sales.
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.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Genuine Parts Company

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 Genuine Parts Company
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 Genuine Parts Company

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 Genuine Parts Company 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 Genuine Parts Company

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)