Environmental analysis of Oprah Winfrey

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Wheelen & Hunger 10th edition:
In your text read Case 23, "Oprah Winfrey: The story of an Entrepreneur" (pages 23-1 through 23-12). Using the case, your readings, the Cybrary and the Internet, develop both an EFAS (External Factors Analysis Summary) Table and an IFAS (Internal Factors Analysis Summary) Table. It is important that you submit with your tables a description of both your environmental and internal scanning process, including what factors you considered and why.

About Oprah

Oprah Winfrey is rightly said to be the story from rags to riches, but more than that she is the story of grit and determination. She is the first African-American woman to become a billionaire and now the founder of Chairman Harpo, Inc. Her earlier life was bed of thorns and she was an abused child. She entered television at the age of 17 and now she is one of the legends of the Broadcasting world.

Oprah's show has won many awards and is the highest rate talkshow in television industry (wikipedia), as has Oprah herself. She appeared in several movies, notably The Color Purple. Her Oprah Book Club has helped many literary works become bestsellers. Oprah Magazine and Oxygen Media are other recent ventures. She has also won multiple Emmy awards and according to Forbes magazine, she was the richest African American of the 20th century and the world's only black billionaire by 2004.

Oprah clearly states her corporate mission for The Oprah Winfrey Show "...is to use television to transform people's lives, to make viewers see themselves differently and to bring happiness and a sense of fulfillment into every home."
www.sbinformation.about.com/cs/development/a/womenbiz.htm

Let us do a SWOT analysis including EFAS and IFAS table.
SWOT Analysis

There should be a constant evaluation of the present environment, trends and the performance of the firm. The company should look for strengths and weaknesses and adjust their vision and long term objectives accordingly. A SWOT analysis is commonly used to measure the company's resource capabilities and deficiencies, its market opportunities and the external threats to its future well - being.
In a company there are resource strengths represent competitive assets. A company having particular strengths and the competitive capabilities in which they can engage in competitive advantage will allow the company to perfume well in the marketplace. Furthermore, these strengths which take the form on the following:
- A skill or important expertise
- Valuable physical assets or human or organizational or intangible assets
- An achievable or attribute that puts the company in a position of market advantage
- Competitively valuable alliances or cooperative venture
By having a sense of the strengths in the various resources state above, one must measure the competitive power of each item by answering the following questions:
- Is the resource strength hard to copy?
- Is the resource strength durable - does it have staying power?
- Is the resource really competitively superior
- Can the resource strength be trumped by the different resource strengths and competitive capabilities of rivals?
The company's competitive capabilities can range from the following:
- Competence: Something that the firm is good at doing
- Core Competence: The company can produce and / or perform better then other internal activities
(Porter, M)
- Distinctive competence: The company can do things far better then the other competitors
- Now that we discussed about the company's strengths in terms of resources, there are also company's weaknesses which can be defined as competitive liabilities. These can include inferior skills, poor management, and lack of intellectual capital.
(Strategy by Graham, Corporate Strategy by Hamel and Strategic Management by Wheelen)

Thus SWOT Analysis is a powerful technique for understanding your Strengths and weaknesses, and for looking at the Opportunities and Threats you face. Specifically, SWOT Analysis is a simple but powerful framework for analyzing your company's Strengths and Weakness, and the Opportunities and Threats you face. This helps you to focus on your strengths, minimize threats, and take the greatest possible advantage of opportunities available to you. http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_05.htm
ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS
External Factor Analysis Summary:
"The remote environment comprises factors that originate beyond, and usually irrespective of, any single firm's operating situation: (1) economic, (2) social, (3) political, (4) technological, and (5) ecological factors." (Pearce, 2004, p.79) Globalization presents a new series of challenges for organizations in that not only does the execution of core competencies become more challenging as well as amplified in importance, but also in that cross-cultural communication and the interaction of disparate values and beliefs further complicate organizational operations. Here we will analyze the affect of societal forces and to see what trends are like to affect the Oprah in a brief manner:

Demographics and Societal Trends

Oprah has a wide array of fan following. But the factors like lifestyle changes age distribution of population, life expectancies etc are the factors, which is of much importance. It will include study of following factors:
? population size and distribution
? age distribution
? education levels
? income levels
? ethnic origins
? religious affiliations

Thus we can see that the Income levels in the global economy are increasing. Population growths in the developed countries have been stable but countries in the emerging economies like India have good growth. The education level is also increasing. All these are positives for the Oprah. Moreover the trend of growing
Old age population especially in US is creating the need of empowerment, seeking peace and ...