If you’ve ever listened to Warren Buffett discuss investing, you’ve heard him mention the idea of a company’s moat. The moat is a straightforward way of describing a company’s competitive advantages. Company’s with a strong competitive advantage have large moats, and therefore higher income. And investors ought to always be concerned with profit margins.
This short article looks at a methodology called the Porter’s Five Forces Analysis. In the book Competitive Strategy, Harvard professor Michael Porter describes five forces affecting the profitability of companies. These are the five forces he noted:
Intensity of rivalry amongst existing competitors
Threat of entry by new competitors
Pressure from substitute products
Bargaining power of buyers (customers)
Bargaining power of suppliers
These five forces, taken together, provide us with understanding of a company’s competitive position, and its profitability.
Rivals
Rivals are competitors within an industry. Rivalry in the industry could be weak, with few competitors that do not compete very aggressively. Or it can be intense, with many competitors fighting in a cut-throat environment.
Factors affecting the concentration of rivalry are:
Number of firms – more firms will lead to increased competition.
Fixed costs – rich in fixed costs like a percentage of total price, companies must sell more products to cover those costs, increasing market competition.
Product differentiation – Items that are relatively exactly the same will compete based on price. Brand identification can reduce rivalry.
New Entrants
Among the defining characteristics of competitive advantage is the industry’s barrier to entry. Industries with high barriers to entry are often too costly for brand new firms to enter. Industries with low barriers to entry, are relatively cheap for new firms to go in.
The threat of recent entrants rises because the barrier to entry is reduced inside a marketplace. As more firms enter a market, you will notice rivalry increase, and profitability will fall (theoretically) enough where there is no incentive for brand new firms to enter the.
Here are a few common barriers to entry:
Patents – patented technology can be a huge barrier preventing other firms from joining the market.
High price of entry – the greater it’ll cost you to get going in an industry, the higher the barrier to entry.
Brand loyalty – when brand loyalty is strong within an industry, it can be hard and expensive for enter the market with a new product.
Substitute Products
This is probably probably the most overlooked, and therefore most damaging, component of strategic making decisions. It’s imperative that business owners (us) not just take a look at exactly what the company’s direct competition is doing, but the other types of products people could buy instead.
When switching costs (the costs a person incurs to switch to a new product) are low the threat of substitutes is high. As is the situation when dealing with new entrants, companies may aggressively price their products to keep people from switching. When the threat of substitutes is high, profit margins will tend to be low.
Buyer Power
There’s two types of buyer power. The very first is associated with the customer’s price sensitivity. If each brand of a product is comparable to all the others, then the buyer will base the purchase decision mainly on price. This can increase the competitive rivalry, resulting in lower prices, and lower profitability.
The other type of buyer power pertains to negotiating power. Larger buyers generally have more leverage using the firm, and may negotiate lower prices. When there are many small buyers of the product, other things remaining equal, the organization offering the product will have higher prices and higher margins. Conversely, if your company sells to a couple large buyers, those buyers may have significant leverage to barter better pricing.
Some factors affecting buyer power are:
Size of buyer – larger buyers may have more power over suppliers.
Number of buyers – when there are a few buyers, they’ll tend to have more control of suppliers. The Department of Defense is definitely an illustration of a single buyer with a lot of control of suppliers.
Purchase quantity – When a customer purchases a sizable amount suppliers output, it will exercise more power over the supplier.
Supplier Power
Buyer power compares the relative power a company’s customers has regarding this. When multiple suppliers are producing a commoditized product, the company can make its purchase decision based mainly on price, which tends to lower costs. On the other hand, if your single supplier is producing something the company should have, the company will have little leverage to barter a better price.
Size plays a factor here as well. When the company is a lot larger than its suppliers, and purchases in big amounts, then the supplier will have very little capacity to negotiate. Using Wal-Mart as an example, we discover that suppliers have no power because Wal-Mart purchases such vast amounts.
Several factors that determine supplier power include:
Supplier concentration – The fewer the number of suppliers for a given product, the greater power they’re going to have over the company.
Switching costs – suppliers become more powerful because the cost to alter to another supplier increases.
Uniqueness of product – companies that produce products specifically for a business will have more power than commodity suppliers.
It’s important to analyze these five forces as well as their affect on companies you want to purchase. The Porter Five Forces Analysis will give you a great reason behind the profitability of an industry, and the firms there. If you want to know why a business is able, or unable, to make a decent profit, this is the first analysis you want to do.