Jayanoris

2. Michael Porter’s Competitive Forces Model

Michael Porter identified five forces of competition that influence success.
These are:

1. Bargaining power os suppliers. This is high when you, as an organisation or person, can easily move to another supplier.The supplier here is the main source of your main asset, so to speak. This can be a traditional goods/services supplier or even a pal who gives you cash.

2. Bargaining Power of customers. It is the highest when the customers can easily switch from you to another person/organisation.Customer here may bear its traditional meaning or may take the meaning of the specific organisation/person whose attention you are seeking, in any way.

3. Rivalry Within the Industry. This relates to the jostling of position between the players within a particular industry i.e. are there any people doing something similar to what you are trying to do? Are they friendly?This influences the actions that can be done by an individual member of the industry because he/she/it has to consider how others will react.

4. Threats of New Entrants. This is the ease with which a particular organistion/person not previously in the indutry can enter into the industry as a competitor.

5. Threats of Substitutes. Substitutes are things or people that achieve the same general purpose of your product (or you) but they are not of the same industry. This will put some constraints on the activities that one in the industry can do.

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Use of this model is normally often confined to business strategy but let us attempt to diversify its use, shall we?

If you are female, replace: girl, guy, she, boyfriend with: boy, chick, he, girlfriend respectively.

Ok. There’s a girl you want and so you are in need of a strategy. Lets develop your strategy using Michael Porter’s model.

Firstly, look at the 5 competitive forces and analyse them.

Bargaining power of suppliers: Is there another girl you can chase after? Analyse your options and pick the easiest target.

Bargaining power of customers: Can she easily move from you to other guys? How many guys are after her? Knowing this, adjust your strategy to effectively curb the problem of other guys.

Rivalry within the industry: Identify the guys who are really after her. Note their moves and approach(es). Come up with ways of pacifying them and prevent them from doing the same to you.
Threats of new entrants: Is there a chance of even more guys coming after her?If ye, you need to figur out how to prevent this. Malicious rumor mongering may work-just kidding 🙂

Threats of substitutes: What can replace you, as a boyfriend, in her life? Studies? Work? Perhaps a …er… liking for other girls? Good luck trying to find ways of dealin with these.

Voila! Analyse the situation like this and you’re almost done as far a strategising is concerned.

More reading.
Next: Environmental Analysis.
Previous: SWOT analysis.

Strategy can be defined as a broad based plan for doing something.

It is important to apply a strategy to everything you endeavour to do to ensure a high probability of success. Beleive me, you can strategise on how to do anything, and you should! Some of things that you can aplly strategy are sports, running a business, taking exams or even finding that elusive life partner. By the way, this list is definitely inconclusive.

So, how do you or anyone go about formulating strategies?

There are several approaches to strategy. Today, right now, we’ll talk (actually, I’ll write) about one approach:
1.SWOT Analysis
This entails critically analysing yourself or your business to ascertain your Strengths and Weaknesses. The rule is: identify your Strengths and take advantage of them while trying to minimise the effect of your Weaknesses.

With this in mind, you scan the environment( which can be the team you’re playing against, the industry your business is in or even the girl you’re trying to court) to find Opportunities and determine how you can use your Strengths to exploit them. In addittion, you determine what Threats – things that can cause your failure – exist and ways of containing them.

STRENGTHS / WEAKNESSES
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OPPORTUNITIES / THREATS

To drive the point home, lets take an example, shall we?
Until recently, I was the unofficial champion of chess in my neighbourhood. I lost my ‘title’ to someone who I though would never beat me. Ever!
After the game, I was embarrased to learn that he had used a simple strategy to beat me. He just used SWOT analysis and came up with:

Strengths: I never lose my concentration.
Weaknesses: I’m a novice and can’t always see all the options available to me.
Opportunities: Kelvin probably won’t be using any specific strategy. He also tends to lose his concentration in longer games.
Threats: If I let him, he can win the game very quickly.

So what did my good friend do? His strategy was: Defend very strongly in the beginning and ensure that the game lasts as long as possible. Later, take advantage of Kelvin’s loss of concentration.

Simple, right? It did work. The game was really tight in the beginning-my friend didn’t attack at all. Needless to say, once the game was past the 2-hour stage, I made some horrendous mistakes that cost me the game.

Thats strategy for you: it’ll take you places everyone else thought you coud not go.

Next time: Part 2-Michael Porter’s Competitive Forces Model.