Question

SWOT (address each one separately...please make sure you have a substantial list for each at least 4 points for each)

SWOT FOR A MEXICAN FOOD TRUCK

Think about the strengths within your business that add value to your service or your marketing efforts. You may want to evaluate your strengths by area, such as marketing, finance, and your organizational structure.

Strengths include the positive attributes of the people involved in the business including their knowledge, background, education, credentials, contacts, reputation, or the skills they bring.

Strengths also include tangible assets such as available capital, equipment, credit, established customers, existing channels of distribution, copyrighted materials, patents, information and processing systems, and other valuable resources within the business.

Weaknesses are factors that detract from your ability to have a competitive edge.

Weaknesses might include lack of expertise, limited resources, lack of access to skills or technology, inferior service offerings, or the poor location of your business. These are factors that are under your control, but for a variety of reasons, are in need of improvement to effectively accomplish your marketing objectives.

Opportunities assess the attractive factors that represent the reason for your business.

These opportunities reflect the potential you can realize through implementing your marketing strategies. Opportunities may be the result of market growth, lifestyle changes, resolving problems associated with current solutions, positive market perceptions about your business, or the ability to offer greater value that will create a demand for your services.

If it is relevant, place timeframes around the opportunities. Does it represent an ongoing opportunity, or is it a window of opportunity? How critical is your timing?

Threats include factors beyond your control that could place your marketing strategy, or the business itself, at risk.

A threat is a challenge created by an unfavorable trend or development that may lead to deteriorating revenues or profits. Competition -- existing or potential -- is always a threat. Other threats may include intolerable price increases by suppliers, government regulation, economic downturns, devastating media or press coverage, a shift in consumer behavior that reduces your sales, or the introduction of a "leap-frog" technology that may make your products, equipment, or services obsolete.

What situations might threaten your marketing efforts? Get your worst fears on the table. A part of this list may be speculative in nature and still add value to your SWOT analysis.

Answer 1

In any business scenario and environment, there is a constant change in the macro and the micro environment factors that affect the business portfolio. To identify this, there are multiple techniques that are used. Few popular tools are:

• SWOT Analysis

• Pestle Analysis

• Five forces

• Balanced scorecard etc.

In all these above techniques there are various factors that are considered by the company before implementation or going to full scale rollouts. Few of the major elements that are focused highly by companies are Strengths, differentiation value and threats from other areas. In case of Pestle analysis, the focus is towards getting input and changes in business environment from political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental perspective. The focus area in these parameters is the immediate and long term threat that can happen to the company.

Strength and differential value that a company provides to the consumer go hand in hand. If the consumer`s basic expectation can be fulfilled, the next thing they would demand is the additional value that is generated by company at an affordable cost. Very often in spite of the strengths of major companies it is the additional value generated which the consumer prefers and wants over the common solutions. It is therefore vital for any company to do a business environment scanning to understand its own strength and the value it can give to the consumers. It could be possible that there are many companies in the market who have similar strengths.

Another major element that should be considered is the threats. The threat can be from operational, business or sustainability point of view. There can be unexpected legal issues if the legal obligations are not met. To ensure this all companies do a thorough study of the market and understand the legal obligations. Another threat that can arise is from environment impact that the company creates. There can also be challenges that are due to unstable political issues or die to economic stage of the community. To avoid and forecast all the problems that can arise, companies do a threat analysis using the various techniques mentioned above.

If companies do not carry out a detailed environment scanning, then it can have long term issues which can destabilize the entire company and cause issue to the company`s survival. To avoid all this unwanted and predictable issues the environment scanning is performed.

For the given case, we are looking into detail of Mexican food truck. Here we can apply SWOT analysis as follows:

Strengths:

• Highly committed workforce with high knowledge of the local market and local consumer taste

• Reputed and well known food truck in the vicinity

• Long lasting and returning set of customers

• Latest equipment`s in the kitchen and modern systems for tracking necessities vs demand

• Good credit period with customer ensuring long term partnership

• Easy to eat options ensuring this is a preferred location for on-the-go food

• Good demand forecasting methods ensuring all the required customers needs are met

Weakness:

• No defined areas to sit and eat

• Limited menu selection

• Difficult to keep up with all the changes in regulations and adhere to it faster

• Lower profit margins if the demand forecast is not met in actual demand

Opportunities:

• Expansion into neighboring areas with additional trucks

• Add more cuisines to menu and serve larger audience

• Provide healthier option in the menu

• Food delivery mode

• Mechanisms to order via portal and mobile app with customizations

• Can easily move into neighboring areas as per the season changes

Threats:

• Other food startups coming up in the vicinity

• Change in mindset of people for a healthier lifestyle and less of outside food

• Constant changes in the laws and regulations in food industry

• Inflexible supply chain leading to higher power to suppliers

• Vehicular and kitchen emission issues which could potentially harm the environment