JPM Overnight Delivery is one of the premier providers of shipping and information services worldwide, competing against firms like FedEx and UPS. As it prepares its marketing plans for the years ahead, it will conduct a very thorough SWOT analysis. Your job is to look at eight potential elements of JPM's SWOT analysis and determine which are strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Your ability to properly categorize these elements in your own career will allow you to maximize your firm's strengths and opportunities while also minimizing weaknesses and threats. The evaluation of a firm's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is called a SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis can be a valuable tool in the development of a marketing plan, but too often the SWOT analysis is not well thought out and proves to be an ineffective waste of time. Perhaps the most common mistake when conducting a SWOT analysis is the failure to separate internal issues from external issues. The strengths and the weaknesses aspects of the SWOT analysis focus on internal capabilities. The opportunities and threats aspects focus on the external environment.

Match each item with the appropriate element of the SWOT analysis.

a. Post office closings
b. JPM has information technology infrastructure
c. Increasing demand for international packages
d. JPM has an excellent workforce and human resource department
e. Potential global economic recession
f. JPM has increasing labor costs
g. JPM has less fuel efficient planes
h. Increasing fuel costs due to turmoil in the Middle East

1. Weaknesses
2. Threats
3. Opportunities
4. Strengths