Competitive Studies: SWOT, Five Forces and Porter’s Generic Framework

Running head: COMPETITIVE STUDIES
Competitive Studies
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

COMPETITIVE STUDIES1
The modern and successful businesses across the world makes strategy analysis as an
approach for facilitating, analysing, researching and mapping the abilities of theirs for
achieving a future envisioned state on the basis of the present reality (Paternoster et al. 2014).
They take into consideration all the important aspects like the organisation’s processes,
business development, people capabilities and technologies in this regard. Numerous strategy
tools are used for this purpose and some of the examples include PEST & PESTLE analysis,
Porter’s Five Forces, Benchmarking, BCG (Boston Consulting Group) matrix, Value Chain
analysis, and VRIO analysis. SWOT analysis etc. This essay shall elaborate on explaining the
three major competitive strategy development tools that are used in the modern businesses
and would assess how they use them. The three chosen tools for this purpose are SWOT, Five
Forces and Porter’s generic framework.
The SWOT framework- It is to note that SWOT analysis comprises of a portrayal
and collection of the details and information regarding the internal and external factors that
have, or might have a significant influence on the organisational business (Gurel and Tat
2017). It is an acronym that stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It is
to mention that both the strengths and weaknesses are internal to an organisation and could be
directly managed by it and the opportunities and threats are external and they can only react
and anticipate to them. However, below is mentioned an example of SWOT analysis for the
company- Amazon.
a) Strengths- It is to note that strengths are the factors that provide an edge for an
organisation over its competitors. Amazon has successfully gained a very strong and
positive brand image and brand awareness, which is considered to be a significant
strength for it (Wheeler 2017). Also, the business diversification by Amazon is yet an
important factor that is directly related to the very strong position that is gained by it.
With the same, the company have involved in online retail marketing and at the same

COMPETITIVE STUDIES2
time, the technical innovation that the company has adopted are helping the organisation
to support its long term organisational growth. It allows the organisational managers to
synthesize their insights that they have gathered from the internal analysis of the strengths
and weaknesses of the company along with those from the analysis of the threats and
external opportunities present.
b) Weaknesses- Weaknesses on the other hand, are the harmful aspects of the organisation
that can be used against it by its competitors. Amazon has formed a business model,
which is imitable in nature and it could have a significant influence on its competitive
advantage. Also, according to Albino et al. (2014), the penetration of the company in the
developing countries is quite low. The retailers of the firm provide high competition
levels and they influence the revenue level of the company.
c) Opportunities- Opportunities refer to the favourable situation that could bring a
competitive advantage. It is to note that Amazon has the opportunity of expanding its
business and influence in the developing economies (Lazzarini 2015). Having a proper
expansion of its brick-and-mortar operations is regarded as a significant opportunity for
the business growth of the company. It can even engage in partnership with some
influencing organisations in the emerging markets.
d) Threats- Threats are the unfavourable one that could negatively influence the business.
For Amazon, the highly aggressive levels of competition present in the online retailing
industry is a significant weakness that the company faces. With the same, cybercrime has
a strong influence on the process of payment that are used by the customers (Holt and
Bossler 2014). It is also a significant threat for the organisation.
Porter’s Five Forces Framework- The five forces model proposed by Michael
Porter is an important analysis tool that makes use of five industry forces for determining
how intense is the competition within an industry as well as its level of profitability