Competitive Strategy, Resources, and Competencies Assignment

Competitive Strategy, Resources, and Competencies - Assignment Example These analyses include SWOT, Pestle, and Ansoff matrix among others. This paper explores and explains the meanings of some of these analyses, including SWOT, pestles, BCG, Porter’s five forces, core competencies, industry life cycle, and Ansoff matrix. Sometimes referred to as PEST, PESTLE analysis is a tool used by businesses analyze their marketing competitiveness. Generally, PESTLE helps firms to study and track the environment in which they operate or are intending to venture into. It is thus a vital tool for any business intending to launch a new product/projector markets. Each letter in the word PESTLE stands for certain factors that are vital to business operations and viability. While the P denotes Political, E stands for Economic, S for Social, T for Technological, L for Legal and E for Environmental factors (Porter, 1998). To keep track of the environment in which it operates, a business should consider all the factors that affect its productivity and profitability and PESTLE comes in handy as a tool for analyzing the whole environment for business ideas or plans. In fact, in recent times, ethical concerns have been added to PESTLE analysis. In a PESTLE analysis, a business must recognize the political situation (governme nt influences), the prevalent economic factors (inflation rate, interest rates, foreign exchange rates,), the culture of a market (cultural trends, demographics, and population analytics), technologies (automation, research, and development), legislation (consumer laws, safety standards, labor laws), and the environmental concerns (climate, weather, geographical location) (Porter, 1998). SWOT analysis is perhaps the most common business analysis tool used in scanning internal and external environments for business strategic planning. These factors are categorized as internal: strengths (S) or weaknesses (W), and external, which are opportunities (O) and threats (T).  Ã‚