University Assignment: SWOT Analysis Report on Barclays PLC

This report presents a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis of Barclays PLC, a leading global bank based in the UK. The introduction highlights the importance of analyzing companies in a dynamic corporate world, emphasizing the need to understand internal factors for improvement. The main body of the report delves into each aspect of the SWOT framework. Strengths include Barclays' leadership in various products and services, a broad geographic presence, a strong brand reputation, and digital banking leadership. Weaknesses involve ethical issues, controversies surrounding bonuses, and past financial crises. Opportunities are identified in emerging markets, rising businesses, and increasing demand for credit, as well as the impact of educational improvements and the English Premier League sponsorship. Threats include the closure of branches and the challenges of competing in the Asian market. The conclusion summarizes the significance of evaluating these internal aspects for Barclays' success. The report references several academic sources to support the analysis.

SWOT Analysis

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Swot analysis – Barclays Plc......................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................2
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................3

INTRODUCTION
Corporate world is facing numerous of changes due to fluctuation in several factors in
order to fulfils the need or demand of domestic as well as foreign consumers (Cua, Reames and
Chai, 2013). Therefore, assignment is going to analyse the SWOT of a well known company of
UK for improving the current position of an enterprise. Thus, report is conducting internal
assessment of Barclay plc for analysing their hidden factors in order to take necessary steps for
improvement.
MAIN BODY
Swot analysis – Barclays Plc
Swot analysis is conducted to know the internal factors of firm, and these aspects consists of
strength, weakness, opportunities and threats, here this embrace about Barclays plc, which is a
global leading bank in the United Kingdom, and also renowned bank for largest international
investment and retail banking institutions. It is performing its operations across fifty countries.
Strength
Barclays has a leadership position in a various products and services like Barclaycard payment
solutions, wealth management, retail banking, etc. It's major strength is that it has a
heterogeneous geographic presence in 50 countries with largest international network and strong
brand reputation and one of the digital banking leader in the country has an honour to launch first
banking website in 1995. It has a hefty marketing and advertising which has boosted the marque
presence with most prominent sponsorship with premier league football tournament in England \
(Dioko, 2016). It has innovative concept that always resides in its side, recently it introduced
OnePlus card which is combined a with many functions.
Weakness
The organization has gone in to conspiracy because of ethical problems through providing
services to people in Zimbabwe, for that it had to answer to the investors for maintaining
integrity. Second time, it came to the limelight when media spread the news that Barclays was
paying steep bonuses to its directions and that immersed into its image. It got into trouble and
need to bailout during recent crises. Its involvement in such cases like South Africa, accusations
of money laundering impacted on its image badly (Jain, Ahuja and Medury, 2013).
Opportunities
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There are huge market opportunities for Barclays, where emerging economies and rising
businesses are taking place, and obviously there is a wide scope for credit and retail banking with
increasing demands in wholesale banking spaces. This will drive it to growth and development in
higher demand for credit and it is an opportunities for capitalising the marketplace. As
educational level is improving, so that youth will aware about investment policies, and because
of the English premier league sponsorship that makes youngsters to get knowledge about
investments, so that they can have right start to begin investments and that will enhance its
business (Harris, Schwartz and Brownell, 2010).
Threats
Barclays closed one of its branch series in the year, 2000 and lost its brand image as unfriendly
to customers, that was an advantage for its rivals to amend their business with goodwill, they
make their own laurels as customer oriented banks. Its status is not so powerful in Asia as in
Europe, to attain the state in Asia the operations are need to be carefully observed, because there
are already game players which are acquired ranks, so it has to be very difficult for Barclays to
hold on ground (Hoványi, 2013).
CONCLUSION
From the above SWOT analysis, it is clear that strength, weaknesses, opportunities and
threats should be evaluated as interior aspects, that has many reasons to impact on an
organization such as Barclays, these things could have been better, if it get the cautious
measurement, to accomplish the entire study.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Cua, F., Reames, S. and Chai, J. C. Y., 2013. Relationships in Technological Processes: Finding
the Common Ground between Diffusion of Innovations and Relationship Marketing
Theories-A Case Study. International Journal of Information Systems and Social
Change (IJISSC). 4(2). pp.17-41.
Dioko, L. D. A., 2016. Progress and trends in destination branding and marketing–a brief and
broad review. International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research.
10(1). pp.5-13.
Harris, J.L., Schwartz, M.B. and Brownell, K.D., 2010. Evaluating fast food nutrition and
marketing to youth. New Haven, CT: Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity.
Hoványi, G., 2013. Essentials of Corporate Communication: Implementing Practices for
Effective Reputation Management. European Journal of Marketing.
Jain, N., Ahuja, V and Medury, Y., 2013. Websites and Internet Marketing: Developing a Model
for Measuring a Website’s Contribution to the Brand. International Journal of Online
Marketing (IJOM). 3(1). pp.14-30.
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