SWOT Analysis – Self Service Kiosks for the Visually Impaired: Management Essay

SWOT Analysis – Self Service Kiosks for the Visually Impaired
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December 22, 2020
* Swot Analysis
Strengths
* Widespread presence of its physical service
* Economies of scale
* Large numbers of ‘visually impaired consumers’
* Digital Integration

Weaknesses
* Small profit margins
* High operational costs
*

Opportunities
* Niche improvement
* Innovation on ‘brick-and-mortar’ and ‘online’ store
* Logistical improvements
* eCommerce integration

Threats
* Low barriers of entry (both general and niche products)
* Demographic changes
* Change in consumer behavior
* Natural calamities

* Internal
The new company would be mainly targeted towards the world’s largest retailer – Walmart. This creates one of the company’s biggest strengths, which is its capacity to become an economy of scale in just a short period of time. It must be noted that Walmart has around 5,362 stores all over the world as of April 2019, serving around 260 million customers every day CITATION Leg19 \l 1033 (Leggate, 2019). Accordingly, a large number of these consumers have visual difficulties, which could easily be addressed by the new product service. Another strength of the new service idea is its digital integration. Since the self-service kiosks would have various functionalities that are linked with a consumer’s mobile device (i.e., price check, product comparison, and store navigation), the service offers an innovative way to meet consumer demands.
In contrast to this, the company’s weakness is also primarily due to its capability of delivering service to all Walmart stores. Particularly, it must be noted that Walmart relies a lot on its brick-and-mortar stores and the number of employees. Since the service would also integrate a ‘personal assistance’ (albeit in infrequent occasions), this still means that additional staff or training for existing employees is needed.
* External
The company’s main opportunities lie in terms of its capacity to improve niche domination and its capacity to bridge the ‘brick-and-mortar’ and ‘eCommerce’ experience. On the one hand, since the target consumer (Walmart) serves a large consumer base and has easily accessible stores, improving niche product domination could prove to be beneficial in the long run. On the other hand, the company can also innovate by bridging the ‘brick-and-mortar’ and ‘online experience’ through the establishment of ‘online specialized support services’ (i.e., customer support for the visually impaired) as well as through the improvement of logistical services for its eCommerce platforms similar to Amazon’s same-day shipping CITATION Reu18 \l 1033 (Reutersevents.com, 2018).
Finally, the company’s main threats are in line with its business model. First, since the store’s business model is relatively easy to imitate other providers of ‘self-service kiosks services for the visually impaired’ could just use the same model to serve specific consumer demographic, thereby reducing barriers to entry. This goes the same for ‘niche stores’ such as drop shipping websites that could offer particularly targeted products with little capital. Additionally, demographic changes, changes in consumer behavior, and natural calamities could all add together to change the p...