A SWOT analysis is a strategy framework used to analyze a company’s financial health and help organizations identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You can find high quality SWOT analyses through our collection for most major companies.
SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A SWOT analysis is a tool that you use to analyze these aspects of a company. A SWOT is often represented as a grid with four quadrants.
You can learn more about the SWOT analysis here:
Many of our databases carry SWOT analyses on publicly traded companies. Learn how to find a SWOT analysis in each of the below databases:
Articles from 1,400+ business, law, and I.T. journals plus 27,000+ videos from industry leaders
Company financials, industry reports, investment analysis, and competitive benchmarking data
Some companies will not have SWOTs in the library databases. Generally, only large, publicly traded companies are covered. If you cannot find a ready-made SWOT for your company, you can use a combination of resources and information about your company, competitors, and industry to conduct your own SWOT analysis. Try to identify peer companies with the same or similar products and services or who are operating in the same market. Read critically to infer the situation and setting of your company.
For more information about researching a company, please see:
For more information on researching an industry, please see:
While you can run a general internet search for a company SWOT, free web-sourced SWOTs can often be dated and unreliable. Pay close attention to the date and who is behind the information. Of course, you can use the open web to research your company in order to create your own SWOT, just be sure to use current company information or news. If you have any questions about the reliability of information you find online, please ask a librarian.
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As noted above, free web-sourced SWOTs can often be dated and unreliable. AI chat bots, like Chat GPT, can only generate answers based on the data it has been trained on, which includes inaccurate or dated information like that found in low-quality, online SWOTs. ChatGPT does not have the ability to fact-check or verify the accuracy of the information it generates. As such, it often generates false or dated information. It also regularly makes up citations or references that do no exist. ChatGPT is just replicating patterns, so it may not be able to understand complex topics, questions that require critical thinking, or the process of attribution.
If you would like to utilize AI to help you with your SWOT analysis, consider having it generate a format or template you can replicate and fill it with your own research and analysis. You can also use it brainstorm different categories to consider researching for your SWOT. Here are some example prompts:
In general, AI is great for brainstorming ideas or providing boiler plate information that you can use as a jumping off point. It is NOT good and mimicking scholarly output, critical thinking, or analysis. When using AI, approach it as a means to enhance your understanding or learning, NOT replace it.
Remember: As with all academic work, the ideas and contributions of others (including generative AI tools) must be acknowledged and provided with proper attribution. Work that is presented as original must be, in fact, original by the learner. The use of generative AI tools, such as Bard or ChatGPT, when completing coursework without proper attribution is a form of academic dishonesty and violates the university’s Academic Integrity policy. To learn more about how to cite AI, please see:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
