Westpac Group: Application of Competitive Strategy Tools (HI6006)

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of the Westpac Group's competitive strategy, focusing on the application of key strategic development tools. It begins with an overview of strategic management and then delves into a PESTEL analysis, examining political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal factors influencing the company. A SWOT analysis is then presented, outlining the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The essay also incorporates Porter's Five Forces analysis to assess the competitive forces within the banking industry, including the threat of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, threats of substitutes, and rivalry among existing competitors. The analysis highlights how Westpac can leverage these tools to maintain and improve its market position. The conclusion summarizes the findings and emphasizes the importance of strategic planning for long-term competitiveness. The essay is well-supported by academic sources and provides a practical application of strategic concepts to a real-world business case.

Competitive Strategy
With Special Reference to Westpac Group, Australia
Student Details
8/22/2019

Contents
Strategic Development Tool: An Overview........................................................................3
PESTEL Analysis...............................................................................................................3
Political Factors..............................................................................................................3
Economical Factors........................................................................................................4
Social Factors.................................................................................................................4
Technological Factors....................................................................................................4
Environmental factors.....................................................................................................5
Legal Factors..................................................................................................................5
SWOT Analysis..................................................................................................................5
Strength..........................................................................................................................5
Weakness.......................................................................................................................6
Opportunity.....................................................................................................................6
Threat.............................................................................................................................6
Porter’s Five Forces Analysis............................................................................................7
The threat of New Entrants............................................................................................7
Bargaining Power of Suppliers.......................................................................................7
Bargaining Power of Buyers...........................................................................................7
Threats of Substitute Products or Services....................................................................8
Rivalry among the Existing Competitors........................................................................8
Conclusion.........................................................................................................................8
Bibliography.......................................................................................................................9

Strategic Development Tool: An Overview
The approach is an elevated-level plan under circumstances of instability to achieve one
or more objectives. Strategy usually includes setting objectives, identifying activities to
attain objectives, and mobilizing resources to develop activities. There are many distinct
strategic planning structures and techniques. These are referred to as strategic
instruments of leadership (Ansoff et al., 2018). Although the correct structure does not
have complete guidelines, most adopt a comparable pattern and have common
characteristics. To evaluate the strategic management tool, Australia's Westpac
Group's strategic thinking as well as tools will be examined in the next paragraphs.
Initially based in Sydney, Australia, the Westpac Financial services Corporation makes
this firm the mother-tree for the 1,429 departments it maintains worldwide (Westpac
Group, 2019).
PESTEL Analysis
It is the evaluation that helps determine an organization's internal environment or macro
atmosphere. PESTEL is the abbreviation of economic, political, social, technological,
economic and legal factors (Yuksel, 2012). Together, these variables are evaluated
about an organization to comprehend that organization's macro atmosphere. The
Westpac Group's PESTEL assessment is performed in this research.
Political Factors
In deciding the variables that can influence the long-term productivity of Westpac
Banking Organization in a certain country or industry, external factors play an important
role. Political variables are factors linked to that country's governing authority in which
the organization operates. Political factors connected to the Westpac group can be
political stability as well as the significance of the banking system in the national
economy such that trade barriers & tariffs connected to banks, wage laws-minimum
wage circumstances and overtime situations in Westpac bank, etc. For example: the
Australian legislature recently passed the 2017 financial institution levy bill mandating a
0.06 levy over $100 billion on the transaction.
Economical Factors
The current financial factors of the country, such as inflation rate, rate of return,
exchange rate, as well as the business cycle, decide an economy's economic activity

and aggregate spending, affect the organization in many ways. Westpac Banking Entity
can use the economic driver of the nation such as rate of growth, leading indicators of
inflation & industry such as the rate of economic growth of the financial institutions
industry, consumer spending, etc. to predicted the growth direction not only of the
services industry but of the institution as well (Blackburn et al., 2013).
Social Factors
All such factors address an organization's social atmosphere. The modern society
culture and manner of doing company affect the culture of an establishment in an
economy. Communal population opinions and behaviors play an important role in how
the marketing businesses of Westpac Finance Corporation will perceive the customers
of a specific market and how they might develop the business strategy for customers in
the banking industry. Social influences such as population numbers and ability level,
social structure, hierarchy and authority structure in community, education level, and
educational standard in the sector, culture, etc. of the Westpac Finance Corporation
(Banfield & Kay, 2012).
Technological Factors
Innovation is disrupting the entire spectrum of distinct industries quickly. Technological
factors have three distinct impacts on marketing as well as strategic planning the new
ways to generate goods and services, creative ways in order to distribute them by
following the new ways to interact with key markets. Westpac's tactical tools must
include factors such as new technological improvements by competitors of the Westpac
Finance Corporation, the influence of technological advances on service offering, the
influence on price structure in the financial sector, the influence on global market
structure in the financial sector, etc (Ansoff et al., 2018).
Environmental factors
These considerations are linked to environmental circumstances and components that
have become crucial owing to rising production scarcity, pollution objectives, doing
enterprise as an ethical as well as sustainable enterprise, carbon footprint goals set by
regulators. Westpac needs to consider climate, global warming, environmental pollution
regulatory laws, banks ' land and water environmental laws, recycling, banks ' waste
treatment, etc.

Legal Factors
Providing health as well as safety legal factors offers equal treatment, advertising
standards, environmental protection legislation, product packaging or the safety of the
environment. It is obvious that companies need to know what is not permissible in order
to do company efficiently. It can be a very hard place to get right if an organization
trades globally because each country has its own set of legislation and provisions. Many
of the legal variables that the management of Westpac Banking Organization must
consider are Discrimination Law, Trademarks, Patent / Copyright Law, Consumer as
well as E-Commerce Security, Labor law, Confidentiality, etc.
SWOT Analysis
SWOT assessment is a strategic thinking method used to assist defines strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities, as well as threats linked to economic competition or project
management (Phadermrod et al., 2019). It is designed to determine the business
enterprise or project goals and define the internally and externally factors beneficial and
unfavorable for achieving goals. SWOT evaluation users sometimes ask as well as
answer questions in order to generate meaningful data for each classification in addition
to making the tool useful as well as to identify its competitive edge. Westpac
organization's SWOT assessment is as follows:
Strength
These the company’s inner characteristics and resources help a good result. It speaks
about the firm's strength to maintain a competitive environment benefit and long-term
survival. Westpac corporation has power in the form of amount of offices as well as
ATMs in Australia. Second biggest consumer banking lenders in Australia, leaders in
institutional banking in Australia, provides versatile banking facilities such as migrant
lending, more than 40,000 staff serves further than 12 million clients do, Westpac has
been defined as among the most environmentally responsible companies in the country,
etc.
Weakness
These are all the components current in a company's inner setting that can bring down
the government's system if not took care of in a productive way, which can also lead to
mistakes. The shortcomings in the SWOT assessment of the Westpac Holding

company may be high rivalry in retail banking from many other leading financial
institutions, the number of locations is still smaller compared to a certain big banks, etc.
In exchange to be successful in the future, Westpac can take care of all these
shortcomings (Lehmann, 2016).
Opportunity
These variables appear in the organization's internal setting. They assist the
organization take advantage of the possibilities on the market as well as take changes
in their activities as well as goals accordingly. Westpac can be granted the right to open
banks in many other nations, this can help with new product advancement and
international expansion, high-tech focus as well as innovation can help build new
banking brands, set up procedures in emerging markets to leverage strong economies,
etc.
Threat
These variables also occur in the institution's internal setting. If not treated properly as
well as on time, they may pose great drawbacks for the corporation. Threats vary from
faults in the external setting and indirectly influence the organization. The threats with
which Westpac Company could face are that the climate of Worsening Australian &
New Zealand will have a major impact on the bank, interest amount, and legislative
changes will affect the bank, etc.
Porter’s Five Forces Analysis
A renowned scholar named Porter developed these five forces. Together all these
forces can assist an institution to finally develop a well-managed development plan for
the success of the business (Fern Fort University, 2019). This framework contains the
following:
The threat of New Entrants
This factor addresses the factors that are related to the competition that the business
faces in the industry, particularly from the new competitors. In this is regarded the
number of rivals and their capacity to outbid a business. In addition to making them
competitive on the market against fresh entrants, the businesses frame fresh policies
and approaches. Westpac can take clients to itself and attain competitive edge over

rivals with the assistance of fresh products and creative policies (Westpac Group,
2019).
Bargaining Power of Suppliers
This force describes how suppliers can easily drive input expenses. The number of
suppliers the business provides the main inputs of the products and service is
determined. The multiple suppliers, so the more a business depends on a supplier, the
more strength a supplier has to drive up costs of production and push for exchange
advantage. The Westpac community can have appropriate suppliers by building a
profitable supply chain with multiple vendors as well as conducting experiments with
product designs using various materials (Ramirez et al., 2017).
Bargaining Power of Buyers
This directly addresses the ability of customers to keep prices down. New products will
decrease the defection of Westpac Banking Organization's current clients to their rivals
(Kharub & Sharma, 2017). This will help in two respects, decrease buyers ' negotiating
authority, and provide the company with a chance to streamline its marketing and
manufacturing process.
Threats of Substitute Products or Services
Substituting goods and services, which can be used rather than another company's
products or services, poses a threat to the organization. Firms producing products for
whom no comparable substitutes exist will have more legislative power to raise prices
as well as lock in favorable terms (Muthusamy, 2019). Westpac can deliver
effectiveness by being business-oriented rather than merely product-oriented, by
recognizing the customer's key needs rather than what the client purchases, by raising
client switching costs, etc.
Rivalry among the Existing Competitors
This force refers to supplier’s quantity as well as the ability to outspend a business. The
greater the number of competitors, along with the number of equivalent products and
services provided, the less the strength of a business (Dannemiller et al., 2017).
Westpac can do this by building a sustainable divergence, building level so it can better
compete, working with rivals to increase the market size instead of having to compete
for a huge market, etc.

Conclusion
A plan defines how the resources or assets will achieve objectives. There is a broad
range of economic management instruments on the market that a business can use to
plan the ideal approaches to achieve their goals. Established in 1817, Australia's
Westpac Corporation is truly one of the government's most historic organizations, with
net assets worth $812.156 billion (as of 2015). Long-term competitiveness in the market
is essential for the corporation. To do this, the business can best follow the above-
mentioned strategic leadership instruments.

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Westpac Group, 2019. About Us. [Online] Available at:
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