SWOT Analysis - General Overview

A SWOT analysis shows you the positive and negative factors affecting a company.

A SWOT analysis considers the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats impinging on a company. These can come from the internal or external environment.

For an example of how you might go about making a SWOT analysis for a particular company, check out our SWOT analysis of Tesco.

By performing a SWOT analysis, the marketer can compare a company's internal strengths and weaknesses with the opportunities and threats in the external environment.

SWOT analysis can facilitate the choice of strategies for achieving stated objectives through focused action.

Speed of action is especially important for online activities, because competitive advantage usually doesn't last long. It's just too easy for the competition to monitor each other's online activities.

A SWOT analysis provides a way of quickly summarizing the findings of a marketing audit.

SWOT analysis and PESTLE analysis

Opportunities and threats come in many forms. They include:

political
economic
sociological
technological
legal
environmental

These factors can be investigated using a PESTLE analysis. You can conduct a SWOT analysis & PESTLE analysis together. This can give you an overall picture of a company and its environment.

To begin with, it is useful to take the T in SWOT and look at the threats to the company. You can use PESTLE to chunk the type of threats you consider. For instance, if you throw the first E in PESTLE into the mix you can be inspired to consider Economic Threats.

Examples of economic threats include fluctuations in the stock market and tax increases.

SWOT analysis and Porter's five forces

The central force in a Porter's Five Forces analysis is Degree of Rivalry. So, when it comes to assessing threats from other companies, a porter's five forces analysis is a useful adjunct to a SWOT analysis.

SWOT and TOWS

In pursuing a SWOT analysis, marketers often find it useful to consider the Threats first. Therefore some analysts have renamed the technique to TOWS.

In summary, a SWOT analysis is a good technique for gaining an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of a company. It is even more powerful when combined with a PESTLE analysis and a Porter's five forces analysis.

More SWOT analysis examples

If you want to know how a business has used swot analysis, see if it is in the following list.

swot analysis of compaq hp merger
swot analysis for church's
swot analysis for a manufacturing company
swot analysis of MTR foods ltd
swot analysis of Olympus
swot analysis on a perfume company
swot analysis princess cruise lines
swot analysis of Wal mart store
swot carnival cruise lines
swot report for specialized bicycle components

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