1. SWOT analysis – SWOT analysis refers to analyzing the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats of an organization. SWOT is really helpful in understanding the entity’s performance by answering the following questions:
- What are the strengths of Intel?
- Do Intel strengths increase the profitability of the company in long run?
- What are the opportunities the company has?
- Can Intel utilize those opportunities for the benefit of organization?
- What are the weaknesses of Intel and does the company is able to convert those weaknesses into strengths?
- What are the threats to Intel and does the company is able to convert those threats into opportunities?
By answering the above questions the readers will understand the nature of company better. However there are some limitations in SWOT analysis:
- When there are many strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats it may become overload of information where some of them might be insignificant
- It helps to identify issues but it will not tell how to resolve those issues or capitalize those issues.
- It involves some of the judgments of the Researcher which is subjective in nature.
2. PESTEL analysis – PESTEL analysis refers to analyzing the external environment of United States of America. This analysis consists of six factors such as Political, Economical, Socio-cultural, Technological, Environmental and Legal factors. By doing this analysis the Researcher will be able to explain to the readers about the nature of the environment for Electronic Company in United States of America. This model explain the following questions which readers might pose:
- Whether United States of America (USA) politically stable? Does the government favor Electronic Companies?
- How is the economy of USA? Is it flourishing or declining?
- What are the tastes and preferences of customers in USA? Are they price sensitive or not?
- Is technology booming in USA?
- Do the country rules and regulations affect the profitability of Intel Corporation?
By answering the above questions the readers get a fair and clear idea about the external environment of the country which Intel operates. However, there are few limitations of this analysis:
- Environment is dynamic and change at a very fast pace. Hence it becomes very difficult for the Researcher to predict the environment. Sometimes by the time this report is issued the environment changes.
- The amount of data that are required to do this analysis is huge. The Researcher may not be able to collect all the data. Moreover even if the Researcher draws out a detailed PESTEL analysis it may seem to have overload of information in one aspect of performance evaluation.
- The Researcher may not be able to get all the updated information which leads to making more assumptions which may be discretionary.
3. Porter 5 Forces model – Porter 5 Forces model refers to analyzing the industry competitiveness (in this case electronics industry). This model takes into account five forces which affect the competition significantly such as bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers, threat of substitutes, threat of new entrants and competitor’s rivalry. By doing the competitive analysis the Researcher will be able to explain to readers about the nature of competition in electronics industry and Intel position in such industry. With the help of this analysis the Researcher will try to answer the following questions:
- What is the level of buyer’s bargaining power? Are there any switching costs involved to customers? Who are major customers (retail or supermarkets)?
- What is the level of supplier’s bargaining power? Are there any switching costs involved to company? Is there a choice between supplier’s or few major supplier’s dominating the market?
- What are the substitute products of Intel’s products? What is the level of threat it is posing on Intel’s products?
- What is the level of barrier to new entrants in electronic industry?
- What is the level of competition is it severe? How market share is divided?
By answering the above mentioned questions the readers will get insight towards the competition about the electronic industry. This will help when making decision regarding whether to invest in electronic industry. However, even this model has some limitations to it:
- This model assumes relatively static market structure which unlikely to happen in real world scenario.
- It can be difficult to define industry. Even if we define industry as electronic industry in this case it may be difficult to assess the competition as in electronic industry different companies sell different kind of products which may not be same.