Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Porter's 5 Force

Porter’s Five Force model was introduced by Professor Michael Porter of Harvard Business school in the mid 1980s. This new model deals with factors outside an industry that influence the nature of competition inside the industry. Following are the break down of Porter’s 5 Force Model:

  • Competitive Rivalry
  • Threat of New Entrants
  • Power of suppliers
  • Power of buyers
  • Availability of Substitutes

Fast Food Industry

Competitive Rivalry – MODERATE attractiveness
Fast food industry in this case means a global chain of hamburger fast food restaurants. Since, this is a mature industry there are few dominant players already existed in the market for decades already. Fast food giants like MacDonald, Burger King, and Wendy’s, are continuously competing with each other to capture more market shares and seeking more profitability. As result, these multinational corporations have to extend their competitions beyond the domestic market and moving into global environment.

Threats of entry posed by new or potential competitors – LOW attractiveness
It’s not easy for new companies to enter the industry. New competitors will need to face many major players, who have stable market shares with large assets. New competitors will also need a large capital to enter into the business and generate enough earning to maintain the high operating fix cost. Tied government regulation and complicated inspections are needed because their final products that directly related to consumer health.

Bargaining power of suppliers – LOW attractiveness
The impact of the suppliers on the sellers is low because most of the current major players have their own production subsidiaries. Most of inventories are directly produced by the same company. Other market suppliers are only needed to provide supports in case of shortage in the production.

Bargaining power of buyers – LOW attractiveness
The consumers hold substantial power and have direct impact to the industry. Main reason is because the cost of switching to another restaurant is very simple. In fact, most fast food customers are middle to low income consumers; this means they are price sensitive. If seller increases the price it’s highly possible that they will lose current customers.

Availability of Substitutes – HIGH attractiveness
This industry has much more product substitutes compare to other industry because the choice of food is endless, consumers does not have to depend on fast food to live. This also indicates that the cost of switching from one product to another product is low.

Overall, Fast Food Industry is not very attractive to new investors.

5 comments:

Adnan's Blog said...

I disagree with your assessment of Medium treat of entry in Fast Food industry. I feel it is really easy to open a fast food restaurant. You not selling not unique from your competitors. are u?

Tae Park said...

i disagree with a comment that says 'it's not easy for new companies to enter the industry. A part of it, I agree with you because it can be really competitive for a new fastfood company against existing companies. People already have their favorite fastfood place so it can be little difficult for new fastfood company to attract and steal the customer. however, like Adnan's comment, itcan be easy to open a fastfood restaurant and it's possible for the new company to bring a change. Even though it not nationially a chainstore in the beginning, it could grow like every other small business did, such as starbucks, which was one small cafe in the past, became the best now..

Alex Martkovsky said...

Overall, I agree with your assessment of the fast food industry but I think that the rivalry between competitors is very high, which makes it a low attractiveness. While yes, there are a few big players there are a lot more fast food places that are not as big but have a found a niche in the market (In and Out, Sonic, Jack in the Box) that compete intensively with each other and the big players.

NATALYA said...

I agree with comments other people that the threat of the entry of new competitors should be medium,because people always like to try different food and they are not so loyal to fast food restaurants.

ohadmatalon said...

I agree with you in general. I believe the bargaining power of suppliers is low, which means high attractiveness - I agree with your analysis but not with your conclusion. I also agree with your analysis for the substitute availability, but the high availability makes the industry unattractive.