SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis of Yahoo

by The TSW Team

SWOT analysis means measuring a company’s or organization’s Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats. For now Yahoo! has been defeated by Google and Facebook, but once it was dominant in the worldwide web. Below the SWOT of Yahoo is elaborated.

SWOT Analysis of Yahoo!

Yahoo STRENGTHS

The way Yahoo has entered the market and became one of the largest business in the world points out the internal strengths of this company.

  • Strong Position in Online Advertisements: Yahoo is one of the popular search engines around the world. And its popularity has favored it to make a strong position in online advertisement area. It’s considered as one of the largest profitable advertisement business. This company mainly focuses on affiliated advertising for big websites, just the way Google does. Despite the competition with Google, Yahoo is doing good in this area, and it’s considered as the prime source of revenue for this company.
  • Extended Internet Services: Yahoo is the pioneer of search engines that offers a broad range of internet services for its users. Its comprehensive service portfolio includes Yahoo Buzz, Yahoo mobile, Yahoo 360, Yahoo mail, Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Shopping, Yahoo real estate, Yahoo next, Flickr etc. and many more. It’s dedicated to offering different target markets with different needs. And this versatile personality of this company has taken it to another level of popularity between both the older and younger generation.
  • Massive Customer Base: Yahoo is the oldest search engine in Internet history. People have been using it from the first era of the internet. And this image has given this business advantage of having a vast consumer base, which is over 350 million users worldwide. This is more than enough for a business to prove its strong position in the market among other competitors. This strength is still helping this company to grow even though there are now strong competitors like Google, are present.
  • Strong Employee Base: Yahoo has a strong employee base of 8000 people all over the world in different organizations. It has made this companies customer service area more developed and satisfying. Also, the people engaged in each department are always trying to make this company more vigorous than ever though extensive research and development. This vast portion of the human resource of this company presents an influential position in the industry.

Yahoo WEAKNESSES

The reasons for Yahoo’s slow growth rate and many incapability represents the weaknesses of this company.

  • Low Market Share: Yahoo is losing its market share. A recent analysis showed that this company only has nearly 6% of the market share worldwide, whereas Google has more than 80%. Market share represents the strong position of a company, and Yahoo continuously being unable to make it stable. The current ratio of market share indicates an alarming situation or this company.
  • Lack of Innovations: Although Yahoo entered the market with high potential and proved itself for a long time by offering different services, this didn’t make any significant innovation for a long time. And it has taken the whole company in a weak position than others in the competition. People now demand new technology and services. Whereas Google successfully satisfies those demands with constant innovation, Yahoo is lagging.
  • Hacking Scandals: Yahoo lost the trust of its users because of the failure to protect the privacy of its users. In 2014, nearly 500 million user’s information got hacked due to a cyber attack. It affected those user’s email accounts as well. In 2016, another shock got revealed that there was another hacking happened in 2013, which caused damaged to almost 1 billion users! But Yahoo hid that from the world. All these scandals have made users ignore these search engines from various services.
  • Declining Financial Health: The financial condition of this company is getting very weak. In 2015. This company recorded a net loss of $404 billion. The event of Verizon communications acquiring with Yahoo is mainly happened due to the constant financial struggle. Both tangible and intangible assets of this company are declining day by day.

Yahoo OPPORTUNITIES

  • Improvement in Business Directory: Among all other services offered by Yahoo, the business directory got the most popularity and acceptance among people. Though it didn’t make any improvements in this service for a long time, it really has a high potential. This service is already authorized and well-structured, but if Yahoo adds a customized, user-friendly interface, it can get really popular among the SMEs worldwide.
  • Developing Mobile Technologies: Yahoo should enter the mobile software industry and create new technologies. At present, people mostly use mobile for accessing the internet. Next, it’ll be television, music players etc. Google, Apple, Microsoft has already developed their own mobile software’s and got immense popularity. That’s it can be a profitable platform for Yahoo.
  • Acquiring Partnerships with different companies: Yahoo has already made several acquisitions but mostly with small ones. But after observing the current situation of this company, it’ll better if Yahoo step forward to build a partnership with big companies. There’s a high potential that after partnering with big companies, a new phase will open with significant opportunities.

Yahoo THREATS

  • Fierce Competition: Google has the possession of most of the market share in the online industry. People also prefer Google the most nowadays, which has made the competition almost unbeatable for Yahoo. Lack of innovation, weak financial status, less improvement in research has made it company to lose its competitive advantages over other companies like the way it had in the past.
  • Obstacles in Global Expansion: Recently China and India, worlds two most important markets for its vast population, has developed their own search engines and those become very popular among them. As a result, expanding Yahoo’s operation is those countries have become very tough. This type of innovations made by countries is becoming a threat for struggling companies like yahoo.
  • The emergence of Social Media Sites: People now tend to spend more time on social media websites. That’s why sites like Facebook and MySpace are developing themselves and stepping toward to provide facilities just like search engines. This type of activities is narrowing the scope for Yahoo to re-target its market and come up with new services.

References

  • https://brandyuva.in/2019/08/marketing-strategies-of-tata-salt.html
  • https://www.mbaskool.com/brandguide/media-and-entertainment/1186-yahoo.html
  • https://www.ukessays.com/essays/business/example-answers-to-questions-on-strategic-management-business-essay.php
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Yahoo!
  • https://books.google.com.bd/
  • https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/search-engine-market-share
  • https://www.howandwhat.net/swot-analysis-yahoo/

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