Swot Analysis Marketing

10 Key excerpts on "Swot Analysis Marketing"

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  eBook - ePub

  Strategic Marketing Planning

  • Richard M.S. Wilson, Colin Gilligan(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Amazon.com and a small number of the airlines, such as Emirates, Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines. The majority of companies, however, cluster around the fair-to-good range, suggesting that scope exists for improvement in one or more of the five areas.

  Having conducted a review of marketing effectiveness, the marketing planner may decide that the results provide sufficient insight into the organization’s capabilities. There is, however, a strong argument for viewing the marketing effectiveness rating review simply as the jumping-off point for a more detailed analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

  3.4 The Role of SWOT Analysis

  Although SWOT analysis is one of the best-known and most frequently used tools within the marketing planning process, the quality of the outputs often suffer because of the relatively superficial manner in which it is conducted. There are several ways in which SWOT analyses can be made more rigorous – and therefore more strategically useful – and this is something to which we will return at a later stage in this chapter. However, before we turn to the detail of the SWOT, it is perhaps worth summarizing the key elements of the four dimensions. These are illustrated in Figure 3.5 .

  Figure 3.5 SWOT: A summary

  Identifying Opportunities and Threats

  Opportunities multiply as they are seized (Sun Tzu, circa 500 BC)

  Faced with a constantly changing environment, managers need to develop a marketing information system (MkIS) that is capable of tracking trends and developments within the market place. Each trend or development can then be categorized as an opportunity or a threat, and an assessment made of the feasibility and action needed if the organization is either to capitalize upon the opportunity or minimize the impact of the threat.

  However, in examining opportunities and threats the reader needs to recognize that these can never be viewed as ‘absolutes’. What might appear at first sight to be an opportunity may not be so when examined against the organization’s resources, its culture, the expectations of its stakeholders, the strategies available, or the feasibility of implementing the strategy. Instead, it might simply be a change within the market that is of little real or immediate consequence. At the risk of oversimplification, however, the purpose of strategy formulation is to develop a strategy that will take advantage of the opportunities and overcome or circumvent the threats.

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  eBook - ePub

  Tourism Marketing for Cities and Towns

  Using Social Media and Branding to Attract Tourists

  • Bonita Kolb(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Determining Marketing Strategy Using SWOT Analysis

  Learning objectives

  • How can a SWOT analysis be used as a tool for organizing all the information from internal, external, and product analysis?
  • Why is a SWOT critical for determining the opportunities and threats faced by a city trying to develop tourism?
  • What strategic focuses are common in developing a marketing plan for tourism?
  • How should the city determine its strategic goal and the objectives necessary for its success?

  Chapter summary

  • A SWOT analysis is a way of organizing all the information obtained through internal and product analysis along with information from external research findings. At the end of the process, internal strength is matched with external opportunity to create a competitive advantage. The first step is to analyze the internal environment strengths. These will focus on the city’s core, supporting, and augmented product benefits to determine strengths and weaknesses. Strengths will be marketed as the competitive advantage. Weaknesses will be analyzed to determine if they must be corrected.
  • The information obtained from analyzing the external environment will be used to determine the external opportunities and threats. Opportunities in the economic, demographic, socio-cultural, and technological environments can be matched with an internal strength to produce a competitive advantage.
  • A generalized strategic focus will emerge. This may be focused on targeting a new segment of consumers or a unique product offering. Price can sometimes be used as a strategic focus. Place can be used if the city is a convenient or unique location to visit. The final option is a promotional strategic focus. Often these are used in combination.
  • With the organized information from the SWOT a marketing goal, objectives, and tactics can be developed. The goal will be broadly stated, along with the specific objectives that will need to be completed to obtain the goal are then listed. Without a plan to achieve the goal, it will not be realized. To increase the chances of success, people should be given specific responsibilities along with a timeline for completion. There are several goal setting models that can help with the process.

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  eBook - ePub

  Managing Strategy

  Your guide to getting it right

  • Chartered Management Institute(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Profile Books

    (Publisher)

  While his work is academically rigorous, his ability to abstract his thinking into digestible chunks for the business world has given him wide appeal in both the academic and business worlds. It is now standard practice for organisations to think and talk about value chains, and the five forces have entered the curriculum of every management programme. Porter’s later thinking on strategy rides the new wave of revolutionary strategic thinking led by Hamel and links consistently with his earlier work. One suspects not only that there is more to come from Porter, but also that it will be wholly consistent with what he has said in the past.

    Performing a SWOT analysis

  SWOT analysis is a diagnostic tool for strategic planning which involves the identification and evaluation of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This framework facilitates the assessment of internal capabilities and resources that are under the control of the organisation and of external factors that are not under organisational control. SWOT analysis involves the collection of information, rather than the framing of recommendations, which can only be considered once the facts have been confirmed. The analysis may be carried out by a single manager, but it usually involves the participation of a wider group, so that insights can be gained from across the organisation or department.

  SWOT analysis emerged in the 1960s from research at Stanford Research Institute into the failure of current corporate planning methods. The technique evolved, became widely used during the 1980s and remains popular, although critics have pointed out weaknesses in its application, including a lack of analytical depth. It provides a simple framework for analysing the market position of an organisation and can be applied in a range of planning and strategic contexts including strategy development, marketing planning, and the evaluation of strategic options for a whole business or an individual department. It may be used in conjunction with tools such as PEST (political, economic, social, technological) analysis, or one of its variants, or five forces analysis, which can provide a deeper understanding of the external environment and help to assess potential risks and threats to the profitability and survival of the organisation. SWOT analysis is also used by individuals to assess personal career prospects, but this checklist focuses on its use by organisations and departments and does not cover the individual aspect.

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  The Sports Management Toolkit

  • Paul Emery(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 2

  UNDERSTANDING THE CURRENTENVIRONMENT: THE SWOT ANALYSIS

  TECHNIQUE DESCRIPTION

  Before sport managers can manage anything they first need to understand the context in which they work. At the least, this involves carrying out a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis. This is a marketing tool that determines where an organization is relative to its internal and external environment. As a situational audit it examines the most influential factors that affect the sport organization at a moment in time and becomes the fundamental building block as to where you will be in the future. In essence the SWOT analysis is the auditing cornerstone of all strategic, tactical and operational business decisions of an organization.

  So that you can better understand what a SWOT analysis is, this chapter first provides you with an overview of the audit outcome, explaining how components are linked to one another, as well as to other concepts and theories, before introducing a case study demonstrating its practical application.

  PURPOSE

  The nature and purpose of the SWOT analysis can be diagrammatically represented by the matrix shown in Figure 2.1 .

  The internal environment recognizes current organizational attributes that can be considered positive (strengths) or negative (weaknesses). Respectively these determine the internal value-creating or value-destroying factors of an organization. Once these have been identified, the organization needs to build upon its strengths or capabilities and eradicate its weaknesses or deficiencies.

  The audit additionally focuses on the macro- and micro-environments that contain the external value factors from the environment. Whereas the internal variables are assumed to be under organizational control, the external factors are typically considered to be outside the control of the organization. For example, the global financial crisis is directly outside an organization's control yet will directly affect consumer spend and hence an organization's activities.

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  Comprehensive Strategic Management

  A Guide for Students, Insight for Managers

  • Eric J. Bolland(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  L. The SWOT in progress can be checked against the organization ’ s mission and vision statements. This will assure alignment with the overall purpose of the organization. M. A caution for any weighing scheme is to avoid having too many elements to weigh. Having too many factors leads to the diminishing of the most powerful factors in the SWOT and the advancement of less powerful factors. The SWOT analysis is a proven and highly understandable tool in strategic management. It has survived while other tools have been set aside. Virtually every business executive is familiar with SWOT and nonbusiness executives are as well. As a nonquantitative tool, it has limitations. It is roughly directional as a tool and produces results that are orders of mag-nitude rather than precise measures. Especially on the external side, both opportunities and threats may be short lived. Both opportunities and threats must be seen as Yeat ’ s cold eye be cold eyed and hard-nosed be realistic. The idea of risk plays a larger role in the external side because this side is harder to con-trol for the organization. The strategy manager must be particu-larly cognizant of risk and vigilant to act on it. Internal and External Analysis 115 Processing SWOT Information Conducting a SWOT is one thing but doing something about it is another. If it is a true tool of strategy, it needs to play a role in strategy formulation and execution. Customarily, after the SWOT is completed, organizational leaders will digest the fi nd-ings and plan strategy. The idea of playing from strengths and not repairing weaknesses is popular. The organization ’ s leaders need to apply SWOT results to three areas: the internal condition, the external condition, and the resultant of combining internal conditions with external con-ditions. For internal conditions, the organization needs to identify its major strengths and then determine which of those strengths can be translated into coherent strategic actions.

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  Business Plans For Canadians for Dummies

  • Paul Tiffany, Steven D. Peterson, Nada Wagner(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • For Dummies

    (Publisher)

  do know tells you a great deal.

  Comparing the strengths and weaknesses of competitors with your own can help you see where competitive opportunities and threats to your business may come from. Opportunities often arise when your company has a strength that you can exploit in a critical area in which your competition is weak. And you can sometimes anticipate a threat when you see the reverse situation — when a competitor takes advantage of a key strength by making a move in an area where you’re weak. Because the competitive landscape always changes, plan to monitor these grids on a regular basis.

  Completing your SWOT analysis

  A SWOT analysis (an analysis of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) allows you to construct a strategic balance sheet for your company. In the analysis, you bring together all the internal factors, including your company’s strengths and weaknesses. You weigh these factors against the external forces that you identify, such as the opportunities and threats that your company faces due to competitive forces or trends in your business environment. How these factors balance out determines what your company should do and when it should do it. Follow these steps to complete the SWOT analysis grid (and check out Figures 9-1 and 9-2 for info on coming up with a strength/weakness grid):

  1.Divide all the strengths that you identify into two groups, based on whether you associate them with potential opportunities in your industry or with latent threats. 2.Divide all the weaknesses the same way — one group associated with opportunities and the other with threats.

  3.Construct a grid with four quadrants.

  4.Place your company’s strengths and weaknesses, paired with industry opportunities or threats, in one of the four boxes (see Figure 9-3).

  SWOT analysis provides useful strategic guidance, mostly through common sense. First, fix what’s broken and address imminent threats. Next, make the most of the business opportunities that you see out there. Only then do you have the luxury of tending to other business issues and areas. Be sure to address each of the following steps in your business plan:

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  Essentials of Marketing Management

  • Geoffrey Lancaster, Lester Massingham(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  However, the word ‘environment’ encompasses many factors, often complexly linked, which affect the survival of any enterprise. Specifically, this chapter examines the range of environmental factors, discusses how to assess the impact of these factors, and suggests a framework for environmental scanning. The identification of opportunities and threats represents one half of SWOT analysis. The other half entails the appraisal of organizational resources in order to ascertain strengths and weaknesses. As shown in Chapter 1, assessment of possible opportunities and threats and the appraisal of strengths and weaknesses make sense only if we consider both internal and external factors together. It is difficult for the individual company to assess the strategic implications of environmental trends and changes and the extent to which they will pose opportunities or threats without considering these trends and changes in the context of organizational resources. In addition, the selection and implementation of strategies are dependent on organizational strengths and weaknesses. Resource analysis and assessment of organizational strengths and weakness that stem from this analysis are a key task of strategic marketing management

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  Tools for Project Management, Workshops and Consulting

  A Must-Have Compendium of Essential Tools and Techniques

  • Nicolai Andler(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Publicis

    (Publisher)

  • The SWOT matrix consists of four quadrants: current internal strengths and weaknesses and future external threats and opportunities (see figure 85). • When investigating ‘opportunities/threats’ in the industry, focus particularly on competitors’ moves (past/current/forecasted). Figure 84 SWOT and TOWS – the 4 process steps 1 2 3 4 ?! Future Presence Strength Weakness Opportunities Threats Ability to exploit Ability to potentially develop and exploit Ability to address and restore Actual value to the business Actual impact (risk) to the business Potential value to the business Potential risk to the business Ability to potentially develop and exploit Target zone Presence Future Target zone Target zone Target zone L H H Strengths L H H Weaknesses S W O T L H H Opportunities L H H Threats Opportunities Strengths ST strategies use strengths to avoid threats List internal strengths SO strategies use strengths to take advantage of opportunities List external opportunities External factors Internal factors List external threats Threats Weaknesses WT strategies minimise weaknesses and avoid threats List internal weaknesses WO strategies take advantage of opportunities by overcoming weaknesses 5.1 Strategic analysis 279 • Prioritise each element, after validation with industry experts, into greatest strengths and opportunities, most important weaknesses and threats (see fig- ure 86 as an example). • Find the right questions to ask when developing a SWOT – typical questions are listed in figure 87. More questions are given in the Checklist below. • The above-mentioned TOWS process step starts at this point. Use figure 88 and test each result from your SWOT analysis against the criteria depicted in the diagram. For example, test the strengths aspects against the two criteria ‘ability to exploit’ and ‘value for the business’. Each one that rates as ‘high’, is then worth considering as a key element for the next process step.

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  Entrepreneurship NQF2 SB

  TVET FIRST

  • R Rehbock(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  ● Describes the location of the business. ● Provides a brief description of the business and the industry in which it operates. SWOT analysis ● Lists the strengths and weaknesses of the business. ● Identifies the opportunities and threats in the external environment. Market analysis ● Describes the target market (customers), profile of the customers, and the location of the customers. ● Provides an analysis of the competition. ● Describes the difficulties the business will encounter as it enters the market. Marketing plan ● Outlines the marketing strategy – how you will go about selling and promoting your goods. ● Explains the pricing policy (how the prices of the goods will be determined). Environmental Assessment Plan ● This section pertains only to businesses such as mining or heavy manufacturing where the land is likely to be degraded or contaminated in some way. Operations plan ● Indicates special facilities such as dry/cold storage, loading bays, parking for customers, etc. ● Describes the suppliers. ● Gives details of the equipment needed. ● Describes the manufacturing process, if relevant. 168 Module 5, Unit 1 There are many other sections that could be included in a business plan, and they depend on the type of business, and the objectives of the business. The importance of the business environment Before we learn the practical skills of putting the components of the business plan together, we need to discuss the business environment in more detail. Do you remember we discussed this in Module 1? Here is a brief re-cap: the business environment consists of three separate, but interrelated, environments; the micro-environment (which is the internal environment), the marketing environment (which is the next layer away from the business) and the macro-environment (which is also called the external environment).

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  Strategic Market Management

  • David A. Aaker, Christine Moorman(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Finally, whether leadership acts or not will depend in large part on the potential costs of inac- tion and the potential benefits of action. If the potential costs of inaction are low, then the com- pany may find it more opportunistic to wait and watch to better understand the size of the threat or opportunity. Conversely, if the potential benefits of action are high, then the company may make short-term plans to scout prospective acquisition targets or partners to act more quickly. Figure 5.3 summarizes the decision-making process a company might employ when assessing its response to the information revealed by a SWOT analysis. Chapter 5 From Strategic Market Analysis to Marketing Strategy 97 SWOT Decision Framework Blind Spots There are several blind spots that can arise when using a SWOT decision framework. Awareness of these challenges can help those charged with conducting the analysis avoid misinterpreting signals, which can reduce the value of initiating such an exercise. First, if markets are defined too narrowly, companies may miss threats/opportunities that are relevant to their business. One way that this can happen is if markets are not defined from a customer perspective, as noted in Chapter 4. When this occurs, emerging competitors that are good substitutes for the job to be done are overlooked. At the same time, this process can pro- duce a great deal of information that needs to be sorted and prioritized lest information overload paralyze the organization. Second, there are a range of psychological decision biases that can interfere with how accu- rately threats/opportunities are identified and interpreted, as described in Chapter 2. These include the tendency to focus on more available information, to seek confirmatory information, and to focus on potential losses more than potential gains.

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