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BUS 225 - Critical Business Skills for Success

This course will set you up for success for all your developing business skills.

Porter's Five Forces


Porters Five Forces is an analytical framework developed by Harvard Professor Michael E. Porter to evaluate the state of competition and potential profitability in an industry by considering the intensify of five forces:

  • Threat of new entrants
  • Threat of substitute products or services
  • Bargaining power of consumers
  • Bargaining power of suppliers
  • Jockeying for position (Often phrased as "Competition.")

While all of the resources on these pages can be useful when creating your Five Forces Analysis, IBISWorld reports are created with Porter's Five Forces model in mind. The analysts and writers at IBISWorld also provide a helpful discussion of how to map their reports to those forces in their article Using Porter's Five Forces to Develop Business Strategies This link opens in a new window. Read through the article to learn more about how to use Porter's framework.

References:

Porter, M.E. (1979, March). How competitive forces shape strategy. Harvard Business Review, 52(2), 137-145.