Question

TOMS Shoes in 2016: An Ongoing Dedication to Social Responsibility Margaret A Peteraf Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth Sean Zhang and Meghan L Cooney Research Assistants, Dartmouth College

Assignment Questions

5. What evidence suggests whether TOMS shoes strategy is working? Does it have a competitive advantage? Is its financial performance improving or declining?

6. What strategic issues should TOMS shoes management and investors be most concerned with? Are there possible improvements to its competitive strategy? Are there internal weaknesses or external threats to its well-being that must be addressed?

Answer 1

5The fact that TOMS was able to experience growth rates of 145-450% while companies like Nike were averaging 8.5% or in some cases even a decline in growth is proof how strong the One for One movement was, especially during the financial crisis.

TOMS is now growing at a declining rate. With 5.1% growth rate in 2015, down from 30.1%, 180%, and 117% in the past years.

6.As stated, TOMS management focuses on hiring interns, new hires, inexperienced, energetic and innovative/out-of-the-box thinkers which allowed TOMS to be more cost-effective in terms of personnel. There are multiple strategic issues this could lead to. While having interns and new hires is a great way to get out-of-the-box thinking, the company could suffer severe damage from naive mistakes made by the same employees.,

TOMS needs to focus more on their marketing strategy. While word-of-mouth was a great way to market the shoes the first time around, it has failed to do so for the new products TOMS has introduced. They need to have a more aggressive market strategy so that they can get back in the