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E-Business: SWOT Analysis

Satisfactory Essays

1. Starting this business online, there are more weaknesses than strengths. The strengths might involve things like existing inventory and any brand equity that the store has built up, but there might be little of either. If the store is old-established it might have built up some good brand equity in the local community, or even from visitors if the area attracts a lot of tourists. The weaknesses are mostly a reflection of the fact that the company does not currently exist. This means that there are no systems in place to take or process orders; the website has no traffic; the brand is not strong outside of the immediate vicinity of the physical store and the company has no experience in e-business.

Moving into the online sphere carries with it tremendous opportunity. Online retail is expected to be worth $279 billion in the US alone by 2015 (Wauters, 2011). Thus, a new entrant does not need to establish much market share in order to generate significant income. In other words, the biggest opportunity is just getting into the business, because there is near limitless upside. Clothing is more of a challenge, since people like to try clothes on before they buy, so the best opportunities within the current product range are clothes like t-shirts, baseball hats and accessories that people do not need to try one before buying.

There are a number of threats to taking this business online. The first is that the competition is intense. A new player in the market cannot

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