Executive summary
In summary, the company Who Gives A Crap (WGAC) has many benefits to offer. Such as their strong relations with other companies and their diversity of products. However, the company is at risk of the Australian Government changing tax laws and not being able to sell toilet paper in Australia (Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S., & Kotler, P. 2014). They also have a high turnover rate that has been rising over the past few years, and this will be a significant threat if they want to expand their business overseas.
Introduction
WGAC is a company that has been in business for nearly a decade, with over 6 million active users. The economic climate has adjusted drastically for many companies and beyond in recent years. The significant change is that it is more difficult to find new customers, who face less disposable income to spend on products such as toilet paper (Armstrong et al. 2014). As a result of this shift, WGAC must advance its marketing strategies to stay afloat in an increasingly competitive market. One option to improve WGAC’s market share is to provide solutions for today’s environmental concerns. To adequately address the environmental issues faced by many Australians, WGAC must first analyze its Strengths and Weaknesses (SWOT) as a company.
Company Profile and Background
The company was founded by the four friends, Jonathon Craven, Benjamin Hance, Thomas Hance, and Simon Griffiths. They had all lived in Melbourne together, and when they first started the company in 2013, they had intentions of it being a small business that would sell a few rolls of toilet paper each month. This was the plan until they realized how popular the product was with customers. Their online store mainly generates the revenue of WGAC, and word-of-mouth advertising has helped them enlarge the company within Australia and recognize their strong brand presence. The four friends have been doing some charity work for years now, including research and development for donations to developing countries.
The company’s profile includes historical information such as its products and target markets. It also consists of its external environments, such as its business strategies and plans for improving these strategies. It also consists of their ability to manage resources, including human site resources, finance, materials, and technology. The most important thing is to find out how the company is performing against its goals and how this can be improved upon in the future. For a company to survive in a competitive market, it needs to implement cost-efficient methods of production, which will be measured in terms of efficiency (returns on investment) and reliability (production structure). For efficiency to rise, process management will have to improve along with technological advancements.
Environmental Analysis and SWOT
Internal Analysis
The internal analysis is all about looking at the current position of WGAC as a company. The strengths include; a known, trusted platform and already has a high market share in countries such as Australia, The United Kingdom, Sweden, and more. In addition, it has established itself internationally as a globally recognized brand recognized by the majority of the Australian population. This can be attributed to their clean-cut look, packaging, and charity association with World Vision. WGAC’s weaknesses include but are not limited to; an over-dependence on sales through grocery stores such as Woolworths or Coles resulting in an inability to negotiate on their own (Ahmad, 2019). This forces them to lower prices or sell cheaper products that can damage their brand image.
External Analysis
The external analysis is all about looking at the potential opportunities present in the current market, giving a significant advantage over competitors and thus increasing sales and brand awareness. The “pay-to-pee” initiative has garnered a lot of attention and has been successful due to its charitable approach in which no money is spent on several toilet paper rolls. WGAC has taken advantage of this trend by creating its brand of toilet paper called “Poo with Purpose.” However, customers also have an increasing concern that they do not want to pay more than they already do for products such as these. With this in mind, a critical environmental issue faced by many Australians today is living within their means (Ahmad, 2019) The WGAC Pay To Poo initiative has been recognized by customers as a great way to reduce costs. It is a solution that appeals to the majority of the Australian population. It can also be argued that this initiative will aid in reducing waste and will also improve customer relations.
SWOT analysis
Strengths
The strengths of WGAC include a platform that is known, trusted, and already has a high market share in countries such as Australia, The United Kingdom, and Sweden. WGAC is well known and trusted by customers due to its strong environmental focus and has been in business for nearly ten years. This can be attributed to its well-known name in Australia for having a strong environmental focus with its initiatives, such as Pay To Poo. WGAC also provides products at competitive prices and has an established brand throughout Australia. The company is known industry-wide as a brand recognized by the majority of the Australian population and has been in business for nearly ten years.
Additional strength is a high brand awareness overseas, an established and recognized international brand. WGAC is recognized internationally because it is well packaged in distinctive boxes, which are very user-friendly for customers (Ahmad, 2019). Its charity association with World Vision adds to its market share. However, its main strength lies in the fact that it has already established itself as a brand name and is recognized as a company that provides quality products at competitive prices. It has also dealt with many challenges such as economic price fluctuations resulting in low sales during economic downturns and natural disasters.
Another key strength of WGAC is its substantial market share. They have an established reputation for being a quality and competitively priced brand with an environmental focus. This reputation has helped to establish itself as a brand name throughout Australia. The company has also dealt with many challenges, such as economic fluctuations resulting in low sales prices during economic downturns and natural disasters such as floods. This means they have been able to deal with most of these issues.
Lastly, they are well known and trusted by customers since they have been in business for nearly ten years. Its brand awareness has been established globally and internationally recognized brand that is known by the majority of the Australian population, which can be attributed to its clean-cut look, packaging, and charity association with World Vision (Ahmad, 2019). This can be attributed to its well-known name in Australia for having a strong environmental focus with its initiatives, such as Pay To Poo.
Weaknesses
One weakness is that the Pay To Pee initiative led to the loss of over $2 million in revenue and further losses from the decrease in sales price due to promotions by grocery stores such as Woolworths or Coles (Ahmad, 2019). World Vision also solved this problem after seeing the success of this initiative and now funds these initiatives for free.
Secondly, it is also worth noting that Pay To Pee has been ineffective in reducing waste. This problem is that it was done after the fact, meaning they did not have a long enough period to see if people were using the product as instructed (Denning, 2017). This means that they are losing money by producing excess products and providing too little of a product for customers’ use, meaning there is no reduction in waste.
Another weakness is that their products may not be any more eco-friendly than other toilet bags and may be contributing to more harm than good. Harms caused by the use of toilet bags are high production costs because plastic bags are not biodegradable. They also pose a threat to animals and humans when disposed of incorrectly (Ahmad, 2019). These bag products, filled with toilet paper, can cause harm when placed in rivers and waterways as they pose a blockage hazard for animals such as fish, resulting in death.
Opportunities
Some of the opportunities include expanding the product line to include other toilet products such as bath towels and hand towels. This can prove to be conducive to the company’s growth if it can expand its customer base, which after Pay to Poo initiatives has shown a significant increase in sales of its toilet products. In addition, the fact that the Australian Government does not own WGAC means that it can operate without being held directly accountable for its actions (Denning, 2017). This allows them to expand further into international markets and gain more profit due to being privately owned. Additionally, WGAC has the option of gaining government funding if it can ally with a government organization such as World Vision (Denning, 2017). The latter has strong ties with governments throughout the world.
Another opportunity for WGAC is an increase in market share for the company, which can be done through more advertising campaigns. Another potential opportunity for them is providing more loyalty programs for customers, such as discounts on future purchases or bonuses for repeat purchases of their products. This can help increase their profit margins and customer satisfaction.
Threats
The threats to the company include the fact that they are a private organization which means they are not held accountable to any government. This can be seen as an advantage because they can act without being bound by the rules and regulations set forth by a government agency; however, it becomes a threat when their actions are unethical (Denning, 2017). An example is the Pay to Poo initiative, where WGAC raised money to provide accessible toilet rolls for people in developing countries. However, it was later discovered that some of these funds were going towards other unrelated uses such as improving public toilets or simply paying out staff bonuses (Ahmad, 2019). Consequently, this meant that WGAC had to pay out of its pocket to provide these products or see its image as a charity organization being tarnished.
Another threat to the company is that they are pretty small compared to some of its competitors, meaning it will have to go above and beyond to compete with more prominent companies. One example would be their competition with Unilever, a much larger player in the toilet paper industry, meaning they can do things that WGAC cannot, such as provide for government organizations (Ahmad, 2019). They also have the option of advertising on television, which World Vision does not do due to not being able to afford it (Ganguly, 2020). This threat also means that WGAC is somewhat limited in the number of products they can produce due to their small size and being unable to use some of the more expensive materials used by Unilever (Ahmad, 2019) This means that they have limited money to spend on their products, limiting what they can do.
Possible strategies for future growth
One of the strategies is where they can spend more money on advertising products and marketing their products to increase customer satisfaction (Ganguly, 2020). This can be done by using television advertisements and expanding the outreach of their products. This is a crucial strategy because it can help them gain many customers who do not regularly purchase from them, connoting that they can sell more products. It also means that people who have never heard of the company or World Vision will begin to see the company and start purchasing its products due to increased customer satisfaction and increased sales which will cause an increase in income for them.
Another strategy that WGAC can use is to form a relationship with World Vision to increase its customer base through market research and distribution (Denning, 2017). This is a strategy because it will allow them to expand their customer base further into new markets and provide products that are more suited to these markets so they can gain more profit.
An additional strategy is where they can increase the number of products they can produce and sell to gain more customers. This is achieved by using cheaper materials and less expensive production methods when manufacturing their products. This can be seen as an advantage because it can allow them to increase their profit margins, resulting in bigger profits for them.
Focusing on dominating the Australian market, WGAC can also attempt to become more involved in politics and lobbying for issues that help the Australian Government. This will allow them to increase further customers and influence to gain more power and reputation (Ganguly, 2020). This can be seen as an advantage because it will enable them to provide products that are more suitable for the Australian market, whereby they can gain more customers. However, the major drawback of this is how they can negatively use this power and influence by selling their products at a lower price and providing it free of charge (Ganguly, 2020). Therefore, people may not be as satisfied with their products if they are not paying for them themselves
Conclusion
In conclusion, to ensure the survival of WGAC, the company needs to expand its product line and appeal to more customers by producing more products for them to gain more profit and increase sales. Furthermore, the company needs to mitigate the incoming threats including the competition with large companies such as Unilever as well as get rid of their weaknesses for them to survive in this market. They can compete with these companies by providing quality products while offering them at a low price so that they can appeal to customers by having affordable products of high quality. Following the possible strategies to the latter to perfect their marketing methods and customer services will make the company known all over the globe. This will eventually lead to a brand that almost all individuals want to be associated with by all means.
References
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Ganguly, K.K. (2020). BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY: A marketing theory to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant. American Journal of Business and Management Research, 1(1), 30-45
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