Porter's Five Forces for Industry Strategy Planning Training Course

Course overview

Industry strategy often fails because teams describe market conditions without testing the economic mechanisms that shape profitability. Leaders may label a market “competitive” yet lack evidence on buyer switching costs, supplier concentration, substitute economics, new entrant barriers, or the intensity of rivalry. This course gives participants a disciplined way to assess these forces, distinguish structural threats from temporary market noise, and convert findings into defensible strategic planning choices.

Participants learn to construct a rigorous Porter’s Five Forces assessment using market data, competitor evidence, value-chain analysis, pricing signals, customer research, and scenario assumptions. They quantify bargaining power, identify credible entry barriers, map substitute threats, assess rivalry drivers, and test how force changes affect margins, investment priorities, and growth options. The course also addresses common misuses of the model, including treating competitors as the only source of pressure, confusing a high-growth market with an attractive one, and producing descriptive rather than decision-ready analyses.

Instructor-led workshops use a selected industry or participant business context to move from evidence gathering to executive recommendation. Participants work with Five Forces scoring matrices, market concentration calculations, stakeholder maps, scenario worksheets, and strategic response options. They leave with a documented industry attractiveness assessment, an evidence register, a force-by-force risk and opportunity map, and a concise strategy-planning briefing suitable for review by senior management.

The course is designed for experienced managers, strategy professionals, commercial leaders, and analysts who contribute to market-entry, portfolio, competitive, investment, or annual strategic planning decisions. It is especially valuable where teams need a consistent method for challenging assumptions before committing resources.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Construct a Porter’s Five Forces analysis using defined industry boundaries, evidence sources, and scoring criteria
• Assess buyer bargaining power through concentration, switching-cost, price-sensitivity, and backward-integration indicators
• Evaluate supplier power using input criticality, supplier concentration, substitutability, and switching-risk analysis
• Identify entry barriers using scale economies, channel access, capital requirements, regulation, and incumbent response tests
• Quantify rivalry intensity with market concentration ratios, capacity conditions, differentiation factors, and exit barriers
• Compare substitute threats through customer jobs-to-be-done, price-performance trade-offs, and switching triggers
• Translate force assessments into strategic response options for pricing, positioning, partnerships, investment, and market entry
• Produce an executive-ready industry attractiveness briefing with evidence, assumptions, scenarios, and recommended actions

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Strategy Managers — who must turn market intelligence into choices for growth, investment, and competitive positioning
• Business Unit Leaders — who need to defend where to compete and how to protect unit profitability
• Corporate Development Managers — who assess industry attractiveness before acquisitions, partnerships, or new-market entry
• Commercial Directors — who need to understand structural pressure on pricing, channels, customers, and margins
• Market Intelligence Analysts — who must convert fragmented external research into a decision-ready industry assessment
• Product Portfolio Managers — who evaluate substitute risks, competitive pressure, and long-term category economics

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience of their organisation’s market, customers, competitors, products, suppliers, or planning cycle. They should be comfortable reading basic business data such as revenue trends, market-share estimates, price comparisons, and customer segments, and should understand core terms including margin, market share, value chain, and competitive advantage. Familiarity with SWOT or PESTLE is useful but not essential. Participants should bring a laptop and, where possible, public or internal information about one industry or business unit. No finance qualification, advanced statistics, coding, or prior strategy-consulting experience is required.

Training methodology

The programme combines instructor-led explanation of the Five Forces model with evidence-based analysis workshops. Participants examine industry datasets, pricing examples, customer and supplier scenarios, and short case materials to test each force rather than score it by intuition. Small groups build force maps, challenge assumptions, calculate simple concentration indicators in Microsoft Excel, and compare strategic responses. The final day uses a facilitated application clinic in which each participant converts their analysis into a concise industry strategy briefing and receives peer and instructor critique.

Course outline

Day 1: Defining the industry and the strategic question

• Purpose and limits of Porter’s Five Forces in strategic planning
• Industry definition versus market, segment, category, and value-chain definitions
• Selecting the strategic decision the analysis must inform
• Identifying profit pools and the unit of analysis
• Separating structural conditions from cyclical performance
• Evidence standards for Five Forces assessments
• Five Forces scoring scales and confidence ratings

Workshop: Participants define the industry boundary, decision question, evidence sources, and scoring criteria for their selected business context.

Day 2: Buyer and supplier bargaining power

• Buyer concentration and purchase-volume analysis
• Customer switching costs and multi-sourcing behaviour
• Price sensitivity, procurement leverage, and backward integration
• Supplier concentration and input dependency mapping
• Input criticality, specification control, and supply alternatives
• Supplier switching costs and forward-integration threats
• Value-chain leverage points and margin capture

Workshop: Participants create buyer and supplier power assessments supported by a stakeholder map, evidence register, and preliminary force scores.

Day 3: New entrants, substitutes, and industry boundaries

• Economies of scale and experience-curve barriers
• Capital requirements, regulation, patents, and proprietary capabilities
• Distribution access, ecosystem control, and network effects
• Incumbent retaliation and credible deterrence signals
• Jobs-to-be-done analysis for substitute identification
• Price-performance comparison of substitute offers
• Technology change and adjacent-market entry scenarios

Workshop: Participants test two entry scenarios and build a substitute-threat map showing customer triggers, switching paths, and implications for demand.

Day 4: Rivalry, profitability, and strategic responses

• Rivalry drivers: competitor balance, growth, capacity, and differentiation
• Concentration ratios and Herfindahl-Hirschman Index calculations
• Fixed costs, perishability, and capacity utilisation pressure
• Exit barriers and escalation of competitive commitment
• Linking force intensity to industry profitability
• Strategic response options for each competitive force
• Trade-offs between positioning, partnerships, vertical integration, and market exit

Workshop: Participants calculate concentration measures in Microsoft Excel and develop a force-to-response matrix for their industry case.

Day 5: From analysis to a decision-ready strategy plan

• Synthesising force scores into an industry attractiveness judgement
• Testing assumptions with base, upside, and downside scenarios
• Prioritising strategic issues by impact, urgency, and controllability
• Designing leading indicators for force changes
• Linking Five Forces findings to SWOT, PESTLE, and strategic objectives
• Writing executive recommendations and decision requests
• Presenting limitations, uncertainty, and evidence gaps

Workshop: Participants complete and present an executive industry strategy briefing containing their Five Forces assessment, scenarios, strategic actions, and evidence gaps.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, Miro, Google Trends

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions