Q. What are Porter's Five Forces and a 5 forces analysis?

Porter's Five Forces is a "corporate strategy framework" developed by Harvard Business School's Professor Michael Porter. Porter defined five competitive forces (threats) that companies need to address in their strategies.

Those Five Forces are:

• Threat of new competitors 
• Threat of substitute products and services 
• Bargaining power of buyers 
• Bargaining power of suppliers 
• Rivalry among existing competitors 
   

Information for the assignments that require Porter's Five Forces analysis can be found in industry reports and in company reports from the Library Databases A-Z list:

• Use these library databases for the industry reports: IBISWorld, Business Insight, Statista (comparisons with competitors) and Plunkett Research.
• Use these library databases for company reports: Business Insights, IBISWorld, Nexis Uni, and ABI Inform.

For the Written Assignment on Porter's Five Forces and your company, you must provide the analysis, describing how each force applies to the industry that your company is part of. There are no articles in our database that do a full analysis for the reader. As the researcher and student, your role is to look at industry, company & competitor data and perform that analysis. 

Getting Started with the Analysis

• How to apply industry research to Five Forces analysis - https://www.ibisworld.com/blog/using-porter-s-five-forces-to-develop-business-strategies/99/1127/
  
  In IBISWorld, the Competitive Forces tab/page in an IBISWorld Industry Report can be used to find information to analyze how the Five Forces operate in the industry your company is in, so it should help you get started with your analysis. Scroll down the IBISWorld page for more details.
  
   
• Chapter 2 section 4 of your etext (pgs. 55-61) and the brief video from Harvard Business Review (under the Links & Files below) give examples of how the forces work and what aspects to consider for your analysis.