0Phase 0 · Context & strategyv2.1.3
Product Development Methods · Strategic Management
DevelopmentMilad Karami🇩🇪 DeutschOriginal tool: John Naska (mokka.solutions) · October 2026

Five Forces

Porter’s industry structure analysis: how attractive is an industry? Five forces act on the rivalry at the centre – the bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, and the threat from new entrants and substitutes. Assess each force, collect its drivers – and then carry the results over into the SWOT analysis (opportunities & threats).

▶ Watch the explainer video (German) 🇩🇪 Deutsch
Guided mode
▸
The four outer forces act on the rivalry at the centre. Click a force to jump to it.
1Mark the driversEach driver either ▲ strengthens or ▼ weakens the force it belongs to.
2Strength of each forceThe driver balance suggests low, medium or high. You decide and give your reasons.
3Industry attractivenessThe five strengths are converted into points. You can see the calculation below.
red: lowers the industry’s profitabilityyellow: mediumgreen: protects it

Guide: how to proceed

Pick a step – or switch on guided mode above and an assistant will walk you through. Step 5 shows how the results feed into the SWOT.

What is the Five Forces model?The basics in brief: the model, the five forces and the bridge to the SWOT

The Five Forces model (industry structure analysis) by Michael Porter is a tool of strategic management for analysing a company’s external environment and determining the attractiveness of an industry – because that is shaped by the market structure.

The five forces

At the centre is the rivalry within the industry. Four outer forces act on it: the bargaining power of suppliers, the bargaining power of buyers, the threat of new entrants and the threat of substitutes. The stronger these forces, the lower the profitability – and with it the attractiveness of the industry.

Link to the SWOT analysis

The results are ideal external inputs for the SWOT analysis: strong forces usually become threats there, protective factors (e.g. high entry barriers) become opportunities. In this way the SWOT builds directly on the Five Forces analysis.

How saving worksSave, Save as, automatic backup and browser notes

This HTML file is your document. Everything you enter ends up in exactly this file when you save – just like a Word document. If you pass the file on, all analyses are included.

Save (green button or Ctrl+S) saves the current state – without any prompt. As long as no working file of your own has been created, the state is kept in the browser and will be back the next time you open it.

Save as (under “Analyses”) creates a file on your hard drive. This is the only place where you are asked where to save. After that, every further Save writes silently to exactly that file.

The first time: open the file, click “Analyses” and then Save as. From then on the green button is enough.

Saved automatically: once an analysis has been saved, the tool backs up every further change by itself after a few seconds.

If something goes wrong: the tool continuously keeps an interim state in the browser. If the browser crashes or you close the window by mistake, your work will be back the next time you open it.

Note on browsers: writing directly to the file currently works in Chrome and Edge. In Firefox and Safari everything stays saved in the browser – the file itself remains unchanged.