Porter's Five Forces

Porter's five forces is a framework for analyzing the competitive intensity and profitability of an industry, developed by Michael Porter and first published in the Harvard Business Review in 1979. It identifies five forces that shape competition within an industry: the threat of new entrants, the bargaining power of suppliers, the bargaining power of buyers, the threat of substitute products or services, and rivalry among existing competitors. Managers and strategists use the framework to assess how these forces combine to determine an industry's overall attractiveness and to identify where a company might build a defensible competitive position.