1. Identify the pros and cons of taking your small business online by performing a SWOT analysis. Include 2-4 items in each category. What is a SWOT analysis? It is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of a business unit and the identification of opportunities presented by the business unit's markets and threats posed by competitors. Strength, weakness, opportunities and threats are what the letters SWOT look like (Schneider 2001, page 32). Inside a business are the strengths and weaknesses and what each business is capable of handling. Opportunities and threats lie outside the business and are based in the real world (Zahorsky 2011). Starting an online business and moving forward is a great advantage. Other benefits include taking steps to focus on growth, using SWOT to understand structure in a business plan, focusing on aggressive advertising that will hold up in the marketplace, mastering threats and responding when needed (Zahorsky 2011). E-commerce offers any business the opportunity to reach more people. Potential customers are now at home on their home computers and no longer need to be inside the store. Customers look for the strengths of businesses, including different business locations, the uniqueness of a product, and the quality of the established business (Zahorsky 2011). It is very difficult to write about the weaknesses rather than the strengths of companies. By choosing to convert to an online business, some of the strengths that small businesses thrive on would be lost. Customer relations would be practically non-existent as well as customer loyalty. Small businesses are influenced by factors outside of the business realm. These include environmental...... middle of paper...... otherwise manufactured. (Schneider 2011 page 326). “In order to prevent these crimes, I would ensure that no matter where the crime took place, there would be punishment even if it took place outside the United States. If a law is imposed in one region of the country, it should be imposed in all regions. As for online gambling, I feel like it should be completely eliminated due to its illegal nature. By doing this, we should find a way to get rid of gambling sites. Works Cited Haughey, Duncan. (2011). SWOT analysis. Retrieved from http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/swot-analysis.html Schneider, Gary. (2000-2011). Electronic commerce. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning Zahorsky, Darrel. (2011). A business owner's secret weapon: SWOT analysis. Retrieved from http://sbinformation.about.com/cs/bestpractices/a/swot.htm