Competitor Analysis
Unless you are a monopoly, you need to continuously monitor your competitors and work at offering better goods and services.
What you need to know are
- who exactly are your competitors?
You must really be specific on this and always make sure that you mention them by name. In Zambia, some of the competitors of QFM are Sky FM, UNZA FM and BBC. In some industries, there are few and as an organisation you can profile them.
But if you sell tomatoes, competitor analysis may be much more difficult but not impossible. What you need to do is focus on the players that are closest to you and/or those that customers will compare you to.
And by the way, there are more competitors to ZAIN and MTN which are not in the country but have a "pull" presence via the Internet. Can you think of any?
There are infact a number(figure it out...)
- what products do your competitors offer?
You must have detailed knowledge about what your competitors have to offer, including the strengths and weaknesses of their offers.
Always remember that when prospective or actual customers make comparisons, it is against that offered by other players.
- who are your competitors target audience?
Yes, who are they targeting? There is always a certain class, or set of needs that your competitor seeks to satisfy. This you must know. Is is the same need you
intend to satisfy?
- Size of your competitors
This may be measured by factors such as existence in other countries, number of branches, end-year financial statistics and even number of employees. But be careful when applying some of the measures mentioned. It is possible for a small organisation to have much more branches than a competitor.
- What promotional techniques does your competitor use the most?
This is important to know to avoid unnecessary conflicts. Some promotional tools such a websites may be used by the competitor as part of its positioning strategy.
- who are your competitors partners?
Whilst organisations, and particularly, marketers, want to create and maintain relationships with everyone, it is important to recognize for a fact that in reality doing so is very limited. Your organisation and a competitor cannot have the same advertising agency creating your promos because there will be divided attention. Thus it is important to know who your competitors work with. But doing so does not necessarily mean you cannot work with them. You can. Both Evelyn Hone College and the Zambia Institute of Management work with the Zambia Institute of Marketing which marketing exams which both institutions offers. Likewise, both Trade Kings and Unilever work with Shoprite which is one of the major
retailers in Zambia.
Know your competitors partners.
- Identify competitor strategies
This point is more subject than factual. What pricing strategies is being used? Distribution? Promotion? Why do you think they use the identified strategies, what is it that they could be trying to achieve?
You need to find answers to those questions.
The CIM Stakeholder Marketing paper for this Dec 2009/March 2010, requires students to conduct a Competitor Analysis for an identified organisation.
If that is the paper you are doing, how far have you gone? If you need any assistance, post it here. It is free and you will get a response.
