SWOT analysis

Question

How can I use SWOT analysis?

Answer

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A SWOT analysis is typically completed in a matrix format, but it can be completed in different formats. A SWOT analysis is a common feature of many business, management and marketing reports. Strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats should be identified. Following this there should be analysis of the SWOT factors to see how they will impact the business. This is important as it will influence the recommendations that you give at the end of the report. For example, there may be a number of good opportunities but there might also be a really big threat, so you would need to analyse which is most important to the business and what strategy you would use to tackle the opportunity or threat. It is important to note that strengths and weaknesses are things that are internal to the company. For example, a strength could be that a business has a very good cash-flow. However, opportunities and threats are things that are external to a business. For example, a threat could be that a competitor has opened a store in the same location as your business (Johnson, et al., 2013).

References

Johnson, G., Whittington, R., Scholes, K., Angwin, D., and Regnér, P. (2013) Exploring Strategy Text & Cases. 10th Edition. Cambridge: Pearson