Friday, December 02, 2005(Please do not copy for your Reflection Journal submissions)
We had learnt about SWOT, PEST, and the additional Porter’s Five Forces Model in today‘s lesson.
As we know, PEST (Political, Economic, Sociocultural, Technological) is used to analyse the environment which should be continuous and feed with all aspects of planning. The SWOT is used to analyse the current business position and also by understanding the aspects Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, we can uncover chances and come out with strategies that helps you compete the market.
If you were to become a T-shirt designer selling your product to the people in Singapore, we can apply the PEST analysis to guide us further into our planning if we should intrude the market. First, we should identify the most important factor of all which is the Political issues. Whether there is any laws or infringement you had come to with which prevents you from selling your product. Once we had confirmed this, we can start planning about Economic issues and the financial status of the target customers. We can approach them in their ability to spend on wants, the tax imposed by the government whether it is reasonable and profitable, and also the inflation rate of the currency. Sociocultural elements like conducting surveys on the preference of the customers, whether one material may be offensive to the target group, and the time available for the people to indulge in leisure (shopping) which relates their spending habits. Technological is the availability of machines to aid in the process of manufacturing. Neglecting this element, one may have the idea to intrude the striving market but without the ability to execute work. Thus, this is also an important criteria that we have to consider when we are doing businesses.
We can apply what we had learnt in improving one‘s academic result by reflecting and changing for the better. The SWOT can be used in this scenario whereby one can observe and identify your own Strengths and Weaknesses you have in a particular subject or module. Having to know the strengths, you can then examine and grab Opportunities to make the use out of what you believe is at your advantage. Knowing your weaknesses allows you to reflect on things you are unsure about and thus improve on these areas which prevents possible Threats from weakening your standing. It may come in forms of impressions or even questions from exam scripts.
I firmly believes that life is similar to doing businesses. Knowing the analytical jargons in business can greatly benefits one when applied in different context.
-JoNa-
-Jona- shot at Friday, December 02, 2005
