Pacific Coast Oil Trust SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

SWOT analysis is a vital strategic planning tool that can be used by Pacific Coast Oil Trust managers to do a situational analysis of the company . It is an important technique to map out the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Pacific Coast Oil Trust is facing in its current business environment.

The Pacific Coast Oil Trust is one of the leading firms in its industry. Pacific Coast Oil Trust maintains its prominent position in market by carefully analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis.  SWOT analysis an immensenly interactive process and requires effective coordination among various departments within the company such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.


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The SWOT Analysis framework facilitates an organization to identify the internal strategic factors such as -strengths and weaknesses, & external strategic factors such as - opportunities and threats. It leads to a 2X2 matrix – also called SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix helps the managers of the Pacific Coast Oil Trust to develop four types of strategies:

• SO (strengths-opportunities) Strategies
• WO (weaknesses-opportunities) Strategies
• ST (strengths-threats) Strategies
•  WT (weaknesses-threats) Strategies

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The core purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that an organization can utilize to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Pacific Coast Oil Trust strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Pacific Coast Oil Trust SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Pacific Coast Oil Trust – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading companies in its industry, Pacific Coast Oil Trust has numerous strengths that help it to thrive in the market place. These strengths not only help it to protect the market share in existing markets but also help in penetrating new markets. Based on Fern Fort University extensive research – some of the strengths of Pacific Coast Oil Trust are –

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• High level of customer satisfaction – the company with its dedicated customer relationship management department has able to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction among present customers and good brand equity among the potential customers.
• Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – Pacific Coast Oil Trust is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
• Strong dealer community – It has built a culture among distributor & dealers where the dealers not only promote company’s products but also invest in training the sales team to explain to the customer how he/she can extract the maximum benefits out of the products.
• Successful track record of integrating complimentary firms through mergers & acquisition. It has successfully integrated number of technology companies in the past few years to streamline its operations and to build a reliable supply chain.
• Strong distribution network – Over the years Pacific Coast Oil Trust has built a reliable distribution network that can reach majority of its potential market.
• Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years Pacific Coast Oil Trust has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Pacific Coast Oil Trust just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
• Superb Performance in New Markets – Pacific Coast Oil Trust has built expertise at entering new markets and making success of them. The expansion has helped the organization to build new revenue stream and diversify the economic cycle risk in the markets it operates in.
• Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Pacific Coast Oil Trust products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.

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Weakness of Pacific Coast Oil Trust – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Pacific Coast Oil Trust can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where a company can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

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• Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Pacific Coast Oil Trust needs to put more money in technology to integrate the processes across the board. Right now the investment in technologies is not at par with the vision of the company.
• The company has not being able to tackle the challenges present by the new entrants in the segment and has lost small market share in the niche categories. Pacific Coast Oil Trust has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
• Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though Pacific Coast Oil Trust is spending above the industry average on Research and Development, it has not been able to compete with the leading players in the industry in terms of innovation. It has come across as a mature firm looking forward to bring out products based on tested features in the market.
• There are gaps in the product range sold by the company. This lack of choice can give a new competitor a foothold in the market.
• Days inventory is high compare to the competitors – making the company raise more capital to invest in the channel. This can impact the long term growth of Pacific Coast Oil Trust
• Limited success outside core business – Even though Pacific Coast Oil Trust is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
• The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of Pacific Coast Oil Trust are below the industry average.

Opportunities for Pacific Coast Oil Trust – External Strategic Factors

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• Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Pacific Coast Oil Trust products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
• The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Pacific Coast Oil Trust to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
• Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for Pacific Coast Oil Trust to capture new customers and increase its market share.
• Organization’s core competencies can be a success in similar other products field. A comparative example could be - GE healthcare research helped it in developing better Oil drilling machines.
• The new technology provides an opportunity to Pacific Coast Oil Trust to practices differentiated pricing strategy in the new market. It will enable the firm to maintain its loyal customers with great service and lure new customers through other value oriented propositions.
• Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Pacific Coast Oil Trust an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
• New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Pacific Coast Oil Trust . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
• Stable free cash flow provides opportunities to invest in adjacent product segments. With more cash in bank the company can invest in new technologies as well as in new products segments. This should open a window of opportunity for Pacific Coast Oil Trust in other product categories.

Threats Pacific Coast Oil Trust Facing - External Strategic Factors

• No regular supply of innovative products – Over the years the company has developed numerous products but those are often response to the development by other players. Secondly the supply of new products is not regular thus leading to high and low swings in the sales number over period of time.
• The demand of the highly profitable products is seasonal in nature and any unlikely event during the peak season may impact the profitability of the company in short to medium term.
• Liability laws in different countries are different and Pacific Coast Oil Trust may be exposed to various liability claims given change in policies in those markets.
• Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Pacific Coast Oil Trust
• The company can face lawsuits in various markets given - different laws and continuous fluctuations regarding product standards in those markets.
• Increasing trend toward isolationism in the American economy can lead to similar reaction from other government thus negatively impacting the international sales.
• Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to Pacific Coast Oil Trust’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.
• New environment regulations under Paris agreement (2016) could be a threat to certain existing product categories .

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Pacific Coast Oil Trust

Although the SWOT analysis is widely used as a strategic planning tool, the analysis does have its share of limitations.

• Certain capabilities or factors of an organization can be both a strength and weakness at the same time. This is one of the major limitations of SWOT analysis . For example changing environmental regulations can be both a threat to company it can also be an opportunity in a sense that it will enable the company to be on a level playing field or at advantage to competitors if it able to develop the products faster than the competitors.
• SWOT does not show how to achieve a competitive advantage, so it must not be an end in itself.
• The matrix is only a starting point for a discussion on how proposed strategies could be implemented. It provided an evaluation window but not an implementation plan based on strategic competitiveness of Pacific Coast Oil Trust
• SWOT is a static assessment - analysis of status quo with few prospective changes. As circumstances, capabilities, threats, and strategies change, the dynamics of a competitive environment may not be revealed in a single matrix.
• SWOT analysis may lead the firm to overemphasize a single internal or external factor in formulating strategies. There are interrelationships among the key internal and external factors that SWOT does not reveal that may be important in devising strategies.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Pacific Coast Oil Trust

In light of the above mentioned limitations of the SWOT analysis / matrix, corporate managers decided to provide weightage to each internal strength and weakness of the firm. Organizations also assess the likelihood of events taking place in the coming future and how strong their impact could be on company's performance.

This method is called Weighted SWOT analysis. It is better than doing simplistic SWOT analysis because with Weighted SWOT Analysis Pacific Coast Oil Trust managers can focus on the most critical factors and discount the non-important one. It also solves the long list problem where organizations ends up making a long list but none of the factors deemed too critical.

Limitation of Weighted SWOT analysis of Pacific Coast Oil Trust

This approach also suffers from one major drawback - it focus on individual importance of factor rather than how they are collectively important and impact the business holistically.

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Example of Weighted SWOT Analysis

You can email us to get an example document of Weighted SWOT analysis.

SWOT Worksheet & Template

If you like to do your own SWOT analysis or want to make your own Weighted SWOT SWOT matrix then feel free to download Fern Fort University SWOT Analysis Template.

References / Citations & Bibliography

• M. E. Porter, Competitive Strategy(New York: Free Press, 1980)
• A. D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1962)
• O. E. Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies(New York: Free Press, 1975);
• L. Wrigley, Divisional Autonomy and Diversification (PhD, Harvard Business School, 1970)
• R. E. White, Generic Business Strategies, Organizational Context and Performance: An Empirical Investigation, Strategic Management Journal7 (1986)