Natural disaster Natural disaster such as tropical storms and typhoons are unexpected and uncontrollable. It potentially affects shipping and delay the delivery. Technological advancement Technological advancement can possess threats to the company such as the electronic document delivery, E. g. : Fax machine and e-mail can be a competition to FedEx where people have other option to deliver their mails and documents faster, cheaper and hassle-free. For example, just by a click on the mouse, an e-mail can be accessible by the recipients from another end of the globe.
However, on the other hand, FedEx’s business growing tremendously due to the mushrooming of online businesses which rely on shipping services to deliver merchandise. What are the major strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) associated with FedEx? Strength FedEx strives to provide the best service quality to its customers where it continually improves its services by enhancing its distribution networks, transportation infrastructure, information technology and employee performance.FedEx invest heavily in information technology and has moved to e-commerce in order to fulfill orders from B2B and B2C merchants. It is the first transportation company to embrace wireless technology.
The company has implemented a highly effective marketing strategy to recognize the untapped customer needs by offering several electronic tools, applications and online interfaces for customers to integrate into their processes to shorten response time, reduce inventory cost, generate better returns and simplify their shipping.FedEx provides flexibility to its customer and their high successful delivery rate renders high reliability to the customers. By emphasizing on technology and customer relationship management, FedEx able to retain its customer loyalty and gain competitiveness over its competitors. FedEx has adopted an effective contingency plan to prevent any unforeseen events from interrupting its business.
For example, they: Able to navigate the 57 tropical storms that threatened their business.Envisioned 8 planes sit in Memphis with fuels, supplies and communications gear ready to deploy to FedEx facility in need. Provided 5 cargoless planes roam the skies, ready to help out in cases of unexpected volume, air emergencies, or broken-down planes. Weakness FedEx relies heavily on information technology. Environmental forces are unpredictable.
If one day they encounter some restrictions to their usage on information technology, the company business will be greatly affected and endangered. Opportunity FedEx turns threats into opportunities by fully utilizing the technology.For example, it relies on high-tech software originally developed by NASA to handle the logistics of its large number of planes. The growing threat from electronic document delivery service like e-mail and fax machine has led to enormous growth to online business which relies on shipping services to deliver their merchandise. This in turn contributes to the growth of FedEx’s business. Treats Competitors Natural disaster Technological advancement Is there any evidence that FedEx has attempted to adopt and use the marketing concept?Explain.
FedEx able to identify the needs of its customer where many businesses demand a more efficient and reliable delivery services. After knowing the needs, FedEx develop an efficient overnight delivery services. This has shown that FedEx’s strategy is market-orientated where it estimated the market needs and created a value to serve the needs. He is able to identify market opportunities, target its market segment (businessmen) and effectively position their service (highly effective overnight delivery service).
FedEx adopted market development strategy where it identifies and develops its new market segment by expanding its operation. It purchases Kinko’s, which operates in 11 countries and help the company to reach new customers and expand in Asia and Europe. It expands its reach further with U. S Postal Service where they can place a drop box in every U. S post offices. They also adopted product development strategy where they continually improve and modify its services by providing a new, better service to its markets.
For examples, they provide new business services and expand FedEx’s shipping options. FedEx does not view itself being as being in the package and document transport business, but rather it describes its business as delivering “certainty”. This is another marketing concept to avoid the organization from limiting their business growth to prevent marketing myopia. Evaluate FedEx’s mission statement. Explain the major strengths and weaknesses of this mission statement. Mission statement explaining the goals of an organization about what it wants or hopes to achieve.
A clear mission statement can act as guidance to the employees by organizing them working towards the organizational goals. So a good mission statement should be: Market-orientated so that the business can be defined based on the goal of satisfying customer needs. However, FedEx’s mission statement is defined based on their employees, partners and suppliers where they are more emphasize on maintaining good supply chain relationship to internally strengthen the organization position. Nevertheless, FedEx’s mission statement also has its strengths.
They meet their customer requirements by providing the highest quality services and they cater the needs of each market segment served. FedEx strives to develop mutually rewarding relationship with its employees, partners, and suppliers. By maintaining good rapport, employees will be highly committed to the quality, loyal to the company and serve their best to the customers. Good supply chain relationship also able to strengthen the organization’s position and help to increase their competencies.