Situation Analysis (Secondary Data) Guidelines
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This is an individual assignment – please do not work with other students. This assignment is designed to teach you to find, summarize, and interpret quantitative data from secondary data sources.
Choose a client company for whom you will be conducting research. The client you choose for this individual assignment should be a large, publicly traded company (e.g., PepsiCo).
Your assignment is to conduct a situation analysis to help this client understand the marketing environment and thus make better decisions. Though both internal and external elements of the environment are important, the focus should be on the external environment. DO NOT copy/paste (plagiarize) text that you find online; you need to paraphrase and summarize findings using your own words. This assignment must be primarily in paragraph form, but some bullet points, subheadings, and tables/figures are permitted if they help you summarize the information more clearly. It should be between 2-3 single-spaced pages with 12-point font (Times New Roman).
Make sure that you use the APA reference format for citations. For more information about APA, please check out: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/reference_list_electronic_sources.html.
You should address each point below, but may choose where to put the focus of your assignment (some points may be more important than others, depending on the company).
- Part 1: Internal Environment (support with data where appropriate)
- Company financials
- Basic revenue, cost, and profit figures for the past 4-5 years (graph)
- First half of SWOT
- Strengths (SWOT)
- What does your client do better than its competitors? (e.g., customer service, logistics, etc.)
- What unique resources (e.g., human, natural, financial, equipment, brand image, etc.) does your client possess that others don’t?
- Weaknesses (SWOT)
- What do competitors do better than your client?
- What unique resources do competitors have that your client doesn’t?
- What are some unique negative attributes of your client?
- Part 2: External Environment (support with data where appropriate)
- Describe the industry and the company’s market share
- Identify a few competitors
- Identify macro-environmental factors (explain how each affects your company)
- Political/legal factors (PEST)
- Laws, regulations, public policies, etc.
- E.g., Consider quality inspections, regulatory bodies (e.g., FDA, USDA, EPA), age restrictions, safety tests, packaging/labeling requirements, etc.
- Economic factors (PEST)
- Changes in the economic conditions
- E.g., Consider median income, purchasing power, inflation rate, interest rates, unemployment rate, etc.
- Socio-Cultural factors (PEST)
- E.g., Trends in population, lifestyle, attitudes toward environmental protection, religion, etc.
- Technological factors (PEST)
- E.g., Innovations for business and consumers, impact of internet on shopping behavior, innovations in packaging, innovations in shipping/logistics, infrastructure and transportation trends, etc.
- Second half of SWOT
- Opportunities (SWOT)
- Given what you found in the PEST analysis, what opportunities exist for your company?
- Threats (SWOT)
- Which factors from the above PEST analysis are most likely to cause major problems for your company?