Marketing Minute with Jennifer – the SWOT analysis

June 7, 2009 – 1:09 pm – No Comment

I have a lot of “in class” experience with SWOT analyses. In strategic management, we had to take cases as prepared and come up with the organizations’ major strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (obviously, what makes up the SWOT analysis).

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, a SWOT analysis is part of the beginning stages of an advertising campaign. When doing research on the company it is important to put together as much background information as possible as cohesively as possible. SWOT analyses are a good tool because it puts the information together in a short form for the company to read when it comes time for your marketing agency (or whomever is putting together the campaign) to show the company the plansbook.

The strengths are the company’s strengths with little or no outside interference, basically what makes the company different from other companies, or what gives the company a competitive edge. The company’s position against its competitors can be a major strength if it is a leader or close to being a leader in its category.

The weaknesses are weak points in the company that the company does have control over, or can do something to change it. For example, in 2005, Hershey candy company only had a 10 percent market share in the world outside the United States. A major weakness for Hershey is its lack of globalization.

Threats are obstacles the company faces, has faced, or will face and cannot control. A major threat facing most companies right now is the economy. Another example of a common threat to most companies is competition. Having detailed information about how your company stacks up against the competition can help when determining the main competitors and how threatening they truly are to your company.

Opportunities basically takes the weaknesses and finds a way to help fix them. In the Hershey example, an opportunity it has is to globalize the company. A preferable method to globalization for it would be horizontal integration, where it acquires other brands in parts of the world where it would like to be. It is also important to know the market you are looking to offer services in. It would be smarter to try to offer chocolate to those in Europe than to those in Asia simply due to the percentage of people who are lactose intolerant in Asia…and the sales numbers for chocolate reflect that.

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