Analyzing Competitors.

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Analyzing Competitors.
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Choose opportunities that avoid headon
competition

• The competitive environment affects the number
  types of competitors the marketing manager must
  face how they may behave.
• Although marketing manager usually cant control
  these factors ,they can choose the strategies
  that avoid head on competition.

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• Competitive information can be obtained from
  marketing research surveys ,Secondary sources
  (trade magazines ,distributors.
• A company needs to answer five questions
• 1.Who are the competitors.
• 2.What are their strengths weaknesses?
• 3.What are the strategic objectives Thrusts of
  competitors?

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• 4.What are their Strengths?
• 5.What are their response Patterns?

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• 1.Who are the competitors?
• Those companies that are producing technically
  similar products are considered to be competition
  eg paint companies ,
• And those that solve the same problem or
  eliminate it in a dissimilar manner.
• The environment needs to be scanned for potential
  entrants into industry. these can take two forms
• One is entrants with technically similar product
  those invading the market with substitutes.

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What are their strengths weaknesses

• A Precise understanding of competitors strengths
  weaknesses is an important prerequisite of
  developing competitors strategy.
• The process of data gathering needs to be managed
  so that information is available to compare our
  company with its chief competitors .

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• This is three stage process
• 1.Identify key factors for success in the
  industry.e.g financial strength or flexible
  production.
• 2.Rate ones company competitors on each key
  success factor
• Eg innovativeness,product quality
• 3.Consumer implications for competitive
  strategyconvert our strength into betterment of
  organisation.

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What are the strategic objectives thrusts of
competitors

• Knowing competitors strategic objectives is
  useful in predicting their likely strategies.
• Strategic thrust refers to the future areas of
  expansion that a company might contemplate-( to
  consider).
• For e.g. A build objective is likely to be
  accompanied with aggressive price promotional
  moves, a hold objective will be more for
  stability .

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What are their response patterns.

• A Major objective of competitors analysis is to
  be able to predict competitor response to market
  competitive changes. Some markets are
  characterized by years of competitive stability.
• Another situation where competitors are unlikely
  to respond is where their previous strategies
  have restricted their scope for retaliation.

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• An eg
• A competitor was a major manufacturer of car
  number plates. A new entrant focused on one
  geographical base, supplying the same quality
  product but with an extra discount. The national
  supplier couldn't respond, since to give discount
  in this region would have meant granting the
  discount nation wide.
• So sometimes there is response ,sometimes not.

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• A company should be able to analyze
• a situation and competitors strategy.
• The end