For All the Chart Lovers Out There!

I hope you enjoyed the SWOT analysis from yesterday!  Today I am going to be doing another SWOT analysis on Bakery B.

I am enjoying analyzing these results that I have collected over the last three weeks!  I know it’s probably been a little bit boring for some of my readers, but hang in there!  There are things to be learned!  To those of you who enjoy charts and graphs like chocolates, I hope you’ll stick around for next months’ posts even though they won’t have too many charts 😉

If you didn’t read yesterday’s post where I explained what a SWOT analysis is, you can do that here: Creating a SWOT Analysis.

OKAY, here are the charts for Bakery B:

As I said yesterday, I added the scores from the subcategories and divided by the number of them to get an average score for each category.  A well rounded company would have each pie wedge be equal in area (33% in each).

Looking at Bakery B’s pie chart, it seems that the Quality category isn’t pulling its weight for the company as a whole.  Additionally, the bar graph seems to indicate that Bakery B is pretty average when it comes to points.  That would explain why it ranked 3rd out of 5 over all.

Okay, now on to the SWOT analysis!

First, the overall graph for reference:

Strengths:

Costumer Experience is something Bakery B does well!  I greatly enjoyed their amazing emailing service because I felt like a valued costumer and I was answered promptly.  Their funnel time was the second fastest of the five bakeries as well.  Their website was super easy to navigate, and I found what I was looking for quickly and easily.  Their in-store service was pretty good too, and the store was very clean.  Walking through their store was like walking through a wedding cake wonderland!  Cakes everywhere in all shapes and sizes!  It was beautiful!  Although their in-store costumer service COULD use a little more work (the store felt really quiet and there was hardly anybody there so it felt deserted), I’d still say they have a pretty solid costumer service base!

Weaknesses:

Bakery B’s weakness, according to my pie chart, is the area of Quality.  I had built up in my mind that their cake would taste really delicious because of how well they had performed in the other 2 categories.  The taste of their cake and frosting was a disappointment in that regard.  I was expecting much more than I got.  I mean, the taste of their cake was really good, as was their frosting, but I got sick of eating it rather quickly.  I don’t know if this has anything to do with the fact that they sold me a frozen cupcake or not.  I’m sure they don’t serve wedding cakes frozen!  At least….I hope not…

Opportunities:

The biggest area of opportunity that I see for Bakery B would be creating a display of their baked goods within the store.  They DO have an amazing display of wedding cakes in their front room, but what I mean is a display of smaller pieces of cake or cupcakes for sale.  Maybe they don’t do this because they don’t have many visitors, but I think having a display would be beneficial simply because people could see cross sections of the cake, and it indicates that they are baking their cakes fresh.  When you have to go to the back room to pick out a frozen cupcake for me, how am I supposed to know how fresh it is?  I believe this would be a great asset to Bakery B if implemented.

Threats:

One of the possible threats for Bakery B would be their hours of operation.  The first time I visited their store, they were closed.  I figured since it was a weekday and only 5 PM that the store would be open – but it wasn’t.  I think it would be beneficial to Bakery B to stay open longer.  4 PM is a little early to close, and prospective costumers that get off work later than that (a large amount of people) are not able to visit the establishment because it’s closed.  Another threat Bakery B might have is the atmosphere of their store.  I felt like I was the only costumer of the day – in a not so good way.  No one else was in the store except the employees, and they were in the back.  But I guess that eliminated the feeling of being watched.  At any rate, adding music to play in the background couldn’t hurt!

Conclusions:

Bakery B puts on a good face to get people into the store!  Their customer service is excellent online, and their website is very easy to navigate.  I found information on wedding cakes quite easily.  However, the atmosphere of their store was a little uncomfortable, and their cake wasn’t the best ever.  It may be different if you were to go in for a wedding cake tasting and sample multiple flavors.  I feel like that’s what the store is set up for – scheduled consultations – so perhaps it felt weird to me because I was doing something a normal costumer of theirs wouldn’t do.

 

Until next time,

Hope Frances