Blog post week commencing 14th October (SWOT/TOWS)

In the week leading up to this blog post our group have been exploring the threats, opportunities, weaknesses and strengths of our company, Nike. We all attended a lecture on 15^th of October which gave us the chance to learn more about the TOWS matrix so we could construct our own. Our research from last week helped us with this because it looked at the factors affecting Nike’s macro and micro environment, from this we could identify the points we needed. To do this we split into two groups; Carmel, Emily-Anne and Alex focused on threats and opportunities while Abigail and Farah focused on strengths and weaknesses. Our aim was to list at least three for each category.

An example of group one’s findings was the triple dip recession as a threat however the rise in online shopping as an opportunity for Nike. Group two found various points too, one being the political and social instability in the countries when Nike manufactures as an internal weakness. An internal strength they found was Nike’s impressive market share in the sports equipment industry.

On the 17th of October we met as a group to combine all the information we had found and put it together in the appropriate boxes of a TOWS matrix which will help us with our infographic. From here we matched our factors from different boxes in the matrix to show how they can be combined to help the business. For example we matched a weakness - ‘Nike has higher prices than competitors’ with an opportunity – ‘Significant increases in online shopping’. This showed Nike can increase revenue by introducing package deals and discounts online which could draw in more consumers who are looking for cheaper goods.

By completing these tasks within the time asked, it meant that we could individually work on exploring the TOWS further in our own time. On Tuesday the 22^nd after our marketing in context lecture we have planned to meet to discuss these points and start on our infographic.