SWOT

Strategy is defined as the long-term plan in order to achieve certain goals and objectives.

This is picture shows type of strategies:

SWOT analysis is a very useful tool that a business could use to develop their strategy. It identifies the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats within organization. 

As you can see in the picture, strengths and weaknesses are the internal factors in a business. 

       Strengths: - What are the advantages in a business?

                        - What are the resources a business has?

                       - What are the achievements? 

For example, Apple is an American multinational company that sells electronic devices such as Iphone, Ipod and Macbook. It has many strengths such as it is one of the world's largest technology company; it has powerful image and customer base. 

    

     Weaknesses: - What are the internal problems that the business has?

                               - What will the people around you see as your weaknesses? 

             For example, Apple has limited products so customers will change to use alternative products such as Samsung or HTC.

Opportunities and threats are the external factors to a business. 

        Opportunities: a business should see the best opportunities to do the business such as what are the best times to launch products or is it the rivalry weak to enter the market?

        Threats: a company should see what are the obstacles that it is facing. Environment, political, legislation effects could be the threats to a company. For example, Samsung is the threat to Apple because it is also the world largest electronic companies and it has lots of customers.

Strengths and opportunities are the good factors; and weaknesses and threats are the harmful factors to a business.

The SWOT matrix

 A SWOT  matrix (also known as TOWS matrix) is a combination of internal and external factors in order to develop strategies. 


S-O: the strategies which based on the strength of the organization, they can maximize the opportunities.


S-T: the strategies that find the best way to avoid the threats by using the strengths of the organization.


W-O: the strategies that find the best opportunities to reduce the weaknesses.


W-T: the strategies which is planned to avoid threats and reduce weaknesses.