SWOT Analysis.

Snooker Loopy

SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis is an effective method of identifying your Strengths and Weaknesses, and to examine the Opportunities and Threats you face. Often the analysis of a SWOT framework can be enough to reveal changes that can be usefully made. Strengths and Weaknesses are what is happening with the business at the moment in time and are internal to the business so can be created and resolved within the business itself. Opportunities and Threats are future aspects about the business and what could happen depending on what actions are taken. They are external so these are created outside the business so is out of their control.

The purpose of a SWOT is to establish where the business is at the moment in time. It gives the business to opportunity to work on certain areas that are not so good in the business, which need improving and enhancing. It gives the business to adapt their strengths to their advantage, work on their weaknesses to make the business stronger, expand their opportunities and to avoid threats so that the business will not suffer from events beyond their control.

The problems with using a SWOT analysis are that they are very subjective, as the SWOT analysis is not independent and will probably be inaccurate. Problems could occur with using a SWOT is that people rarely come up with the same idea twice, so in a partnership, when both partners are designing a SWOT, it could lead to disagreement as they will probably come up with different ideas. Another problem with using a SWOT is that the SWOT can change every month. Your strengths may become a weakness and your opportunities can become a threat, plus other important issues may arise, which need acting on.

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It is vitally important that I create a SWOT for my own business, as it will help me become a more stronger and professional business. It will also help me correct as many of my weaknesses as possible before and after the business is opening and will give a better impression to my customers and will increase customer satisfaction. I can also see what opportunities are available to me so that I can use them to again further interest of customers. The SWOT will also be a good comparison for a year later so that I can see what strengths and weaknesses I have gained or lost, what opportunities I have exploited and what threats I have avoided or encountered. This will help my business become a lot stronger in the second year, what targets to work on and what opportunities and threats to look out for.

Strengths

My business is situated in a very highly populated area of surrey, therefore I have many potential customers. This will help because I have a lot of people to appeal to when I decide to do further advertising. If the advertising is successful them the business will get a lot more customers that if I was situated in a low populated area, then I would get a lot worse reaction and would not have as many customers. The questionnaire I sent out was quite successful. The customers would like to see a snooker shop in the area, as there is not one for quite some distance. Being little competition in the area means that if people want any snooker equipment they will come to me as I have low prices and close to the customers. I also have a large range of products so the customers will have no problem knowing if the shop has what they want, they will just come and assume we have it among the vast selection we have.

Weaknesses

As the business is new the staff have little experience working with customers so for the first few weeks the business may have problems with customers and helping customers getting what they want, but after the staff have dealt with these problems, they will know what to do and these problems will not occur again. When there is snooker on the television, radio or in the newspaper, people will feel like playing, so this will drive people to my shop to buy new cues and tables etc. But when it is not on, people will forget about the sport and will not feel like playing, so this is why we have to advertise and get the customers wanting to play again. Having not much capital will mean when opportunities come up, for example chances for expanding, we will not be able to afford to. This is why we must use the money we have to our biggest advantage as possible.

Opportunities

Not having a high amount of capital means that I can not afford to expand my business, but if people were willing to invest this means any money problems I could occur will be eliminated and I could afford any debts I owe and possibly expand my business. The area around my business is highly populated so any advertising campaign I do will almost definitely get a positive result. Also advertising future sales will bring customers to the shop now, and in the future. More products will become available in the future so this will bring even more customers to the shop.

Threats

There are not many competitors in the area, but the ones that are slightly close to me have build a very respectable reputation and so it will be hard to win over the regulars to these centres. A lot of advertising will need to be done near these centres and make them take an interest in my business. Once I have the customer’s interest, I need to keep them interested. I will need to keep a high standard of hygiene, customer’s service and high quality products. Most of my staff has little or no experience of health, safety or customer service so they will need to be trained. The customer service part of that will be solved by experience in the shop. Another threat is possible other businesses opening in the area. By the time this has happened we hope to have kept the customers interest in our shop and have made them want to stay with us. If the business has little sales, then we may have to take out a small loan to pay of debts or may even have to close the shop down. There is no way of really solving this problem other than try our best to get the customers interested in snooker and wanted to come to our shop to play snooker and buy our products.

I think by have acted on my SWOT analysis I will benefit a great deal in my first year of opening. My staff will be excellently trained throughout the year in hygiene and safety. I think that the customers will be extremely interested in snooker and in my shop from using the SWOT from advertising. I will have learned from the SWOT in the following year and will have made any possible opportunities or threats into my advantage. My strengths will have made the business a lot better and the weaknesses would have been solved through a lot of work and staff co-operation. The customers will have been happy at the end of the year and will keep coming due to acting on my SWOT.