Introduction
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia is a large enterprise that exists across various industries, including television broadcasting, publishing, household décor, and radio broadcasting. As a result of a series of socio-economic precedents of the company, the current SWOT analysis draft may be represented as follows:
Table 1. SWOT Analysis
The aforementioned analysis demonstrates that the current position of the company in the market is rather vague due to previous incidents of Martha Stewart’s incarceration and the company’s takeover in 2019 (Shoulberg, 2019). For this reason, any presentation of a strategic change should be carefully analyzed in order to not to deteriorate the already unstable position in the market.
Advantages
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia currently obtains two major advantages in the market. To begin with, the target market of the company most addresses middle-aged American women. Unlike youth, such a segment is more faithful and reliable in terms of customer loyalty. Thus, according to the sociological research conducted after Martha Stewart’s conviction in 2007, the vast majority of the company’s customers and Stewart’s fans believed in her innocence and flaws of the US legal system (Click, 2017). Another significant advantage of the company is the cost policy, as the prices for publications and home décor are generally lower than those of Stewart Living’s competitors.
Opportunities
Since the past years have become challenging for Martha Stewart Living in terms of both finance and brand reputation, the COVID-19 precedent has become a chance for the company’s rehabilitation, along with its affected counterparts. If previously the target market of Martha Stewart Living did not require substantial investment in the creation of social media content, the current shift to online resources may catalyze the shift from television to social media broadcasting and content creation. Another important opportunity for the company is the fact that it currently has no relation to Martha Stewart as an individual. According to Fournier & Srinivasan (2018), personal brands present a significant threat to the brand, as they become closely associated with the company founder. For this reason, in order to improve sales and market position, the management of Martha Stewart Living should create a marketing strategy to demonstrate no affiliation to the founder of the enterprise.
Competition
The primary competition for Martha Stewart Living currently includes Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel, as they are considered the most widespread home furnishing and décor enterprises both within and outside the US. The first risk in terms of the competition is brand recognition, as Martha Stewart Living is the youngest among the three, and both Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel have already managed to reach nearly global popularity. Moreover, the approach to innovation is more evident in the company’s competitors. For example, in 2017, Pottery Barn launched an IOS application that helped people choose furniture by placing it in their homes with the help of augmented reality tools (O’Shea, 2017). The last risk concerns Martha Stewart Living’s lack of social media promotion and modernized e-commerce tools.
Areas for Improvement
Considering the aforementioned options, it may be concluded that Martha Stewart Living should address the following areas:
- The marketing paradigm, placing emphasis on social media content;
- Industry shift, relocating resources from television and radio broadcasting;
- Brand management improvement, attracting external experts.
In such a way, the company will be able to enter the market with an extensive target audience and a new company image less associated with the former CEO.
Strategic Alternatives
As far as the current position of the company is concerned, it becomes evident that strategic interventions are required to reintroduce business to the market. The strategic alternatives, hence, include market investments, mergers, joint ventures, product-oriented, and customer-oriented strategies. Among the aforementioned examples, mergers and joint ventures are concerned with external growth strategies that account for external investments. On the one hand, it would be beneficial for the company to find an external alliance. On the other hand, however, mergers and joint ventures will inevitably result in higher prices for goods, and the possibilities of finding an investor or another father company are rather limited due to the company’s financial state. Product- and customer-oriented market investments, for their part, are focused on the internal growth of the company. The former strategy, which aims at developing a new market for an existing product, may seem like the most appropriate option for the company. However, the drawback of such an option is the fact that it requires internal investments that do not guarantee success, putting the company at risk.
Decision Matrix
When choosing the most appropriate strategy, the two most significant factors would be the cost and time required for the alternative implementation, as the market becomes more competitive every month. Thus, the other values listed in the decision matrix would include efficiency, target markets tackled by the strategy, the peculiarities of collaboration, if any, and ease. The primary issue concerning the decision-making process using the matrix is the fact that the choice of values is somewhat subjective, and a project manager or a business analyst may subconsciously choose variables that favor one of the alternatives. Thus, for example, when unwilling to address external growth strategies, one may exaggerate the hypothetical interest rates of the investments.
Factors Inhibiting Alternative Success
The primary factor that may affect the strategic flow is the phenomenon of the external socio-economic environment. Any external change such as tax system modification or economic slowdown will inevitably stand in the way of strategy implementation. Other inhibiting factors include poor leadership and communication, lack of feedback, and insufficient resources. In order to address and mitigate such risks, it is of paramount importance to find a management team capable of communicating tasks and objectives. Moreover, it is necessary to create an extensive budget with possible options for resource allocation. Hence, it may be concluded that the most time- and cost-efficient way of addressing any issue during the strategy implementation is to introduce an agile framework.
Elements of Expansion
The notion of business expansion, while obtaining a variety of features besides size increase, remains rather limited in the case of Martha Stewart Living. Essentially, the option for expansion for the company is the identification of new marketing roots in order to attract new demographics and markets with the existing products. Another means for expansion would be the innovation of manufacturing by investing market shares in new technology. In such a way, the company may benefit without expanding externally and spending money on either staff enhancement or product localization.
References
Click, M. A. (2017). Do all “good things” come to an end?: Revisiting Martha Stewart fans after ImClone. In Fandom (2nd ed.) (pp. 191-204). New York University Press. Web.
Fournier, S., & Srinivasan, S. (2018). Branding and the risk management imperative. NIM Marketing Intelligence Review, 10(1), 10-17.
O’Shea, D. (2017). Pottery Barn launches AR app for iOS. RetailDive. Web.
Shoulberg, W. (2019). Martha Stewart brand finds a buyer, but even at cheaper price, there’s no guarantee deal pays off. Forbes. Web.