HOW

TO ACHIEVE AN EXCELLENT SITUATION

ANALYSIS?

ANIK ST-ONGE, Ph.D
Professor Marketing Department
Coordinator of the advertising and marketing
communication course

ESG UQAM

Situation Analysis

A situation analysis helps identify the strategic options and opportunities of a business.

A situation analyses includes various factors such as...

o External factors known as macro-environment analysis (Competitors, economic environment, strengths

of the market, etc.)

o Internal factors known as micro-environment analysis (positioning in relation to competition, internal

organization of the company, etc.)

At the end of your situation analysis, you should be able to write your problem definition and critical
factors

For example, if your mandate is to increase the recruitment of undergraduate students to universities and
that the unemployment rate is low, this becomes an issue.

II. How to Achieve an Excellent Situation Analysis?

Find the Information

i) The client’s brief, the key to your situation analysis.

During the brief of the mandate, I invite you to ask as many relevant questions as possible. Also, remember
to review the mandate several times (client presentation), as well as the video presenting the mandate.

Several information can be found…

- On the company’s website,

- In the annual report of the company,
- On social sites such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

ii) Academic Databases

I strongly recommend consulting UQAM’s online library. Here is an overview of the databases you might
use:

Academic marketing articles

The ABI/Inform databases, as well as Business Source Complete are my favorites.

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eMarketer
eMarketer is an independent research company that brings together information from different
companies on electronic marketing, media and business.

Eureka
The multidisciplinary database provides access to full-text journals and newspapers from around the
world, as well as daily and weekly public television and radio broadcasts and transcripts.

IBISWorld
New In! This database contains over 400 sector reports (NAICS) for Canada and over 1,300 for the United
States.

Industrie Canada (www.ic.gc.ca)

Canadian industry statistics (GDP, retail, etc.).

Institut de la statistique du Québec (www.stat.gouv.qc.ca)

Multidisciplinary scientific databases with articles.

Passport GMID (Euromonitor International): Euromonitor global strategic market research.

You can find statistics and reports on thousands of products and services around the world.

Statistiques Canada (www.stat.gouv.qc.ca)

Multidisciplinary scientific databases with articles.

Vividata
Database used to find:
- Information on the consumption of products by Canadians,
- Statistics on print media readership (newspapers and magazines)
- Data on the lifestyle of Canadians (e.g., amount spent by Canadian consumers, etc.).

Wikipédia: WARINING

Please do not mention the source of Wikipedia in your work. You can contact Wikipedia, but please read
the source of the information mentioned by the site. It is therefore this source that you will mention in
your bibliography.

Don’t be afraid to meet UQAM’s librarians.

Site of all academic databases:
https://uqam-bib.on.worldcat.org/discovery

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 III. How to Write a Situation Analysis?

1. Be factual

• When you write a situation analysis, you must be very factual. When you state a fact, you must
bear it with a source. (Ref: How do I write a source?)
• You cannot use the “I” or the “WE”.
• You cannot make recommendations or give your opinion. This is not the purpose of a situation
analysis.

2. Follow the format of the situation analysis document

The document must be written at 1,5 spaces.

If you decide to insert charts or diagrams, they must be relevant to the analysis. You need to highlight the
important elements of it by writing a paragraph. It is not up to the reader to search for the information in
your paragraph.

However, in order to avoid too many pages, I allow you to use the graphs sparingly.

3. Do not forget sections

Here are the different sections of the situation analysis, as well as the number of pages for each part.

Title page: one page

3.1. Executive Summary – 1 page max

3.2. Table of contents
3.3. Introduction ¾ page max
3.4. Market Analysis – 1 page max
3.5. Environmental Analysis – 1 or 2 pages max
3.6. Competitive Analysis – 1 page max
3.7. Company and Product Analysis – 1 page max
3.8. Consumer Analysis – 4 to 5 pages max
3.9. Problem Definition and Critical factors – 1 page max
3.10. Bibliography/References and appendices

3.1 Title Page

Please do not forget to put the numbers and names of all students.

3.2. Executive Summary

The executive summary should be completed when you have completed your analysis of the situation.
Each paragraph highlights the main conclusions of your analyses. In fact, it is a summary of your analysis of
the situation. It should be no more than one or two pages long.

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3.3 Table of Contents

The table of contents is very important in a document. It identifies all the topics covered in a document.

3.4 Introduction

The introduction of your situation analysis should present the mandate, the objectives of the mandate the
submitters (you) and the recipient of the situation analysis.

3.5 Market Analysis / Market Potential

Market analysis is a very important part. This analysis will greatly guide you in writing your marketing and
communication strategies. This analysis provides insight into the existing and potential market.

This will allow you to:

- Estimate sales forecasts;

- Assess the performance of a product or service in relation to the competition;
- Determine the geographical location where certain marketing communication actions should be
further deployed;
- Define the different distribution channels.

What is the market potential?

The market potential consists of a maximum demand threshold, beyond which any further marketing effort
in order to increase demand will be in vain (saturated market):

- For a consumer group;

- For a specific geographic area;
- For a product or service;
- For a period of time.

The market potential in dollars is calculated as follows:

Number of potential customers x annual purchase frequency x average spend per purchase

OR

Number of potential customers x average quantity purchased per individual x average price per unit

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3.6 Environmental Analysis

To fully understand the business environment, you need to analyze the environment.

Here are some of the factors you might consider:

- Political factors
o How does the government intervene in the economy? More specifically, political factors include labour
laws, taxes, environmental laws, tariffs and restrictions related to the import and export of a product, etc.

- Legal factors
o Legal factors include discrimination law, consumer laws, antitrust law, labour laws, and finally employee
health and safety laws.

- Economic factors
o Economic factors include economic growth, interest rate, exchange rate, GDP, etc.

o Economic factor scan have a very large impact on the business. For example, if the Canadian dollar is very
high, it is time for companies to buy products abroad and improve their productivity.

- Social and demographic factors

o Social and demographic factors include population growth, population health and well-being, population
age distribution, labour force, education, ethnicity, language knowledge, religions practiced, unemployment
rate, traditions, culture, income level per household, standard of living, social trends, etc. For example, if the
population is older, businesses will need to consider adapting to this situation.

- Technological factors
o Technological factors include technological aspects such as research and development activities,
production automation, incentives to use technology, and cost of changing technology.

o Technological factors determine some barriers to entry for the development of certain products. In
addition, these factors also influence the decision whether to outsource resources.

- Environmental factors

o These factors include ecology and climate aspects.

Please note that some factors may not be necessary to analyze. However, for the purpose of your work,
you will need to conduct an analysis of three factors.

Choose these three factors based on your mandate, as well as trends.

For example, if your mandate is to increase NPO donations, the environmental factor (global climate) is
not important.

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3.7. Competitive Analysis

The competitive analysis is a very important step in a CMI plan. If you want to get market shares, you need
to know your opponents. Here are the points you must answer in a competitive analysis. Some questions
will be difficult to answer, use your judgment.

Please, it is preferable for this part to synthesize the information in the form of a table. Here is an example
(Table 1) of a grid for a competitor analysis. Obviously, you don’t have to analyze all these criteria.

As part of your analysis, you must choose five competitors (direct or indirect).

Please use the criteria most relevant to your mandate, in addition to the various questions listed below:

- It is up to you to decide how many criteria. However, you will have to answer some questions:

o What is the company’s mission?

o What are their main objectives?
o Who is their product for?
o What is their positioning? (The positioning may not be clear, so this should be mentioned)
o What strategies have they adopted to achieve their positioning?

• DNA Analysis or the essence of their brand.

• Brand image analysis (Does the brand have a good reputation, does the brand have a good
reputation?)
o What is their slogan and/or signature?
o What are the marketing communications investments? (Not accessible by library, maybe
the client will give you this information) – not required for the course if you do not have
client information.
• What media do they use to communicate?

Obviously, in this part, you will have to write a little. However, your grid may be a page 11 x 17. Your
writing will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of competitors, according to your analysis grid.

3.8 Company and Product Analysis

This part includes the identification of the company’s objectives and strategies. This analysis identifies the
strengths and weaknesses of the business model of the company and the product.

This part must contain:

- The history and mission of the company

- The company’s objectives
- Company positioning Description
- Description of the marketing strategies used and the analysis of the marketing mix (price,
product, promotion (communication made, description of the brand DNA, etc.) distribution
(channels used), relationship with customers.

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 - Company performance: market shared, profitability, stock market shares, etc. Some
information may not exist, be confidential or impossible to find. Do what you can.
- Analyze the product line: product analysis (benefits and weaknesses), product positioning,
design, profitability, communication/promotion of the products. Some information may not
exist, be confidential or impossible to find. Do what you can.

3.9. Consumer Analysis

This part of the analysis is very important. In fact, the more you know your consumers, the easier it will be
for you to achieve an excellent marketing communications plan, and this achieve the customer’s goals.

Consumer analysis should include two parts: primary data analysis and secondary data analysis.

Primary Data Analysis:

As part of the course, collecting primary data will help you find some “insights” from customers, which is
often very difficult to find in secondary data. Obviously, your results will not be generalizable, but it will
give you very interesting information in order to meet your mandate.

It is therefore preferable to use:

o know the needs of consumers and what they want;
o know the motivations for buying the product;
o know the consumer’s decision-making process and the customer’s journey;
o know your perceptions and attitude towards a brand.

For example, if your mandate is for a hair salon, you could ask many questions related to the decision-
making process (choosing one hair salon over another, attitude towards the brand, etc.) For this last part,
you must explain how you collected your date, that is, describe your methodology.

What is included in the methodology section?

• What method did you use to collect your data? (survey, focus group, semi-structured interviews,
etc.)
• Who are the people recruited? (Profile, values, etc.)
• How did you recruit these people?
• When did you complete your study?
• Did you pay these people?
• Responses will need to be entered in the Excel sheet that you will be required to submit to Moodle.

For example:

« To complete the primary data collection, we used the interview guide that was provided to us. »

Obviously, this course is not a research course. Your teacher will support you in this work. You can analyze
data “by hand”. As mentioned earlier, we are not in a marketing research course. However, this part will
greatly assist you in your marketing and communication strategies. However, you will need to write the
findings of your primary data collection.

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Secondary data analysis (academic database via Sofia)

o Market size and growth potential

o Product consumption (online, etc.)
o Consumer income
o Their hobbies, interests
o Media consumption

Several information will be found in the Vividata database, which is accessible via the UQAM Central
Library Website.

3.10 Problem Definition/Critical Factors (1 page max)

In this section, you will highlight the key issues in the analysis of the situation. In short, this could hinder or
assist in achieving the client’s mandate objectives.

IV. How to Present Your References?

The way you will need to use is as follows: The author-date method:

i. The abbreviated reference is entered in brackets;

ii. A list of complete references is then provided at the end of the document in a bibliography.

For example:

• In 2018, the population of Quebec was 8,054,800 (Statistics Québec, 2019).

• According to Michel Sibidé, Director-General of UNAIDS, it is possible to end the AIDS epidemic
(Agence France-Presse, 16 July 2014)

A full guide is available here: https://style-apa.uqam.ca/regles-par-type-ressource/