SWOT analysis is not used as most people think so.

As explained in the rest of the articles here it means;

Strenthgs, weaknesses, opportunities and threats; of a business. So a Business has to see what are it's core strenthgs, its weakness, the opportunities it has in the inudstry and the possible threats it can face. I wont go in detail about all these as they have been explained very well in other articles, but!

Remember it is not immeditalty used to idenfity such things. The swot analysis is cannot be exactly determined for a company unless you perform the

PEST Aanlsysis
and Poster's 5 forces analsysis

Both of these above concepts are very important in a strategic analysis, and concentrate on the macro environment in which the company is based as well as the indutry.
Only after performing these two analysis can you make an accurate judgement of a company's Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats

The PEST analysis means. Political, economic, social, and techologoical factors which can have an effect on your business, negative or positive. E.g. a new techonology might make your business obselete or new political legislation may reduce taxes and increase your profits.

Unlike a SWOT analysis which is both internal and external, the PEST is a completely external analysis of the environment.

The Porter's 5 forces analysis discusses 5 things:

-Power of buyers in the industry
-Power of Suppliers in the industry
-Threat of substitues
-Threat of New entrants
-The degree of rivalary in the industry

This is from an industry's point of view. so e.g. we have to see what is the power of the buyer of an airline company in say Pakistan. There are not many Pakistani private airlines, so the options available to buyers is very less , thus the power of the buyers to negotiate or reduce prices is low as they dont have much choice.

The supplier of an airline company can be boeing or airbus. In this case the power of these two companies is alot as they have a virtual monopoly in the whole world. Thus the airlines have very less power to negotiate prices etc.

I wont explain this in much detail, you can check it out from other sources.

But only after performing the PEST and Porter's 5 forces analysis can you determine the SWOT's of a company.

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