6.2 Identifying and describing strengths and weaknesses
In this section, you will practise completing a SWOT table using information from the case study on Greggs plc, which was originally published in a newspaper.
Activity 6 will ask you to recognise points relevant to strengths and weaknesses, so you can make use of these in a SWOT analysis.
Activity 6
Read the first part of the Greggs case study text below (you will read the second part in the next activity) and highlight the sentences and phrases that refer to strengths in yellow and those that refer to weaknesses in green. You can print out a version of the text to use or you can use the text on your screen.
Case study: Greggs plc (1)
Discussion
It is possible that not all your answers may match with the example but as long as you have selected the key relevant words or phrases, you don’t need to worry about being ‘correct’.
Now that you have identified Greggs’ strengths and weaknesses from the newspaper article, you will turn the points made in the text into concise note form.
Activity 7
Using the points in the following tables, transform the strengths and weaknesses from the text into short bullet points. Remember to use concise noun phrases and formal language in your own words as far as possible. It may be possible to combine information from some of the sentences into a single bullet point. Some pieces of information are already concise, so require minimal changes. Use the completed examples to guide you. When you have finished, compare your answers with the model answers.
Table 3 Strengths
| Sentences in text (Gill, 2023) | Bullet points or noun phrases |
|---|---|
| ‘It appeals to tradesmen and the moneyed classes alike.’ | Wide customer appeal |
| ‘Now with more than 2,300 stores across the UK, Greggs has become something of a national treasure.’ | |
| ‘By 2012 the stock hit £5, and despite a wobble after the pandemic it has since soared to more than £25.’ | Stock price increase |
| ‘Last week Greggs announced half-year sales of almost £850 million, equivalent to takings of more than £4.5 million a day.’ | |
| ‘It’s a very simple menu that can be done in mass in huge volumes.’ | |
| ‘Greggs’s transformation had been less about trailblazing and more about spotting market trends.’ | |
| ‘Greggs hooked onto the bandwagon of meat alternatives just at the right time.’ |
Table 4 Weaknesses
| Sentences in text (all from Gill, 2023) | Bullet points or noun phrases |
|---|---|
| ‘Greggs does not take American Express.’ | |
| ‘It was taking too long to be served.’ | |
| ‘It’s not the best coffee.’ | |
| ‘There was a degree of confusion about whether Greggs was a manufacturing business that sold its product through outlets, or a retail business that happened to manufacture most of the food that it sold.’ |
Answer
These tables show some possible ways of transforming the information on strengths and weaknesses into bullet points or noun phrases. It is possible that not all your answers may match these examples, but as long as you have written the key relevant words or phrases in the bullet points, you don’t need to worry about being ‘correct’.
Table 3 Strengths (completed)
| Sentences in text (Gill, 2023) | Bullet points or noun phrases |
|---|---|
‘It appeals to tradesmen and the moneyed classes alike.’ | Wide customer appeal |
‘Now with more than 2,300 stores across the UK, Greggs has become something of a national treasure.’ | 2,300 UK stores Strong brand recognition |
‘By 2012 the stock hit £5, and despite a wobble after the pandemic it has since soared to more than £25.’ | Stock price increase |
‘Last week Greggs announced half-year sales of almost £850 million, equivalent to takings of more than £4.5 million a day.’ | High sales growth |
‘It’s a very simple menu that can be done in mass in huge volumes.’ | Menu suitable for mass production |
‘Greggs’s transformation had been less about trailblazing and more about spotting market trends.’ | Strong awareness of changing market |
‘Greggs hooked onto the bandwagon of meat alternatives just at the right time.’ | Timely entry into alternative to meat market |
Table 4 Weaknesses (completed)
| Sentences in text (all from Gill, 2023) | Bullet points or noun phrases |
|---|---|
‘Greggs does not take American Express.’ | Non-acceptance of American Express |
‘It was taking too long to be served.’ | Slow service times |
‘It’s not the best coffee.’ | Low-quality coffee |
‘There was a degree of confusion about whether Greggs was a manufacturing business that sold its product through outlets, or a retail business that happened to manufacture most of the food that it sold.’ | Lack of clarity regarding primary business sector |
Discussion
The words you used may not be exactly the same as the examples provided, but the aim was to keep the bullet points concise and formal, using your own words and key concepts to group the information where possible. Often this means creating a noun phrase which carries the main meaning. For example, ‘wide customer appeal’ is a noun phrase which represents the sentence ‘It appeals to tradesmen and the moneyed classes alike’ in the ‘Strengths’ table.
Sometimes this may involve using a word which means the opposite of one that was used in the original text. For example, when the original text included the statement that ‘It’s not the best coffee’ (weakness), the corresponding bullet point describes ‘low-quality coffee’ instead. You may also need to include a word which is more formal than the one used in the text. For example, the description ‘taking too long to be served’ from the ‘Weaknesses’ table is replaced by ‘slow service times’.
If key concepts are used in the original text, these can be kept when turning information into note form. For example, the words ‘stock’, ‘sales’ and ‘market’ remain unchanged.
Grammar note: Nouns and noun phrases
Many of the words that you select to make concise notes will be nouns. This is because nouns carry most of the meaning in a sentence. As nouns are words that name things, they tell you who or what the writer is talking about in a sentence, who performs the actions and who or what is affected by the actions. Some nouns are physical things, for example ‘bicycle’, ‘shop’, ‘director’. These are known as concrete nouns.
Some nouns are not physical things that you can see or touch; they are more like ideas or processes, for example ‘capacity’, ‘production’ or ‘competition’. These are known as abstract nouns. Abstract nouns are very common in academic business language as they are used to encapsulate key concepts and ideas. It is important to recognise them and to use them in your writing as they help you to be succinct and precise.
Often nouns are used with other words that add information to the noun, e.g. adjectives or other nouns. This grouping of words is called a noun group or noun phrase, for example ‘debt-free firm’s investment’, or, ‘manufacturing process’.
OpenLearn - Business communication: writing a SWOT analysis
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