Competitor Analysis templates

What is Competitor Analysis?

The phrase ‘competitor analysis’ is quite self-explanatory; it is analyzing your competitors. This is to get an insight into what your competitors are doing so that you may internally evaluate based on comparison.

What is competitor analysis used for?

Competitor analysis is used to answer a range of questions:

-Who are my competitors?
-What are they selling?
-What is their market share?
-What are their strategies- past and present?
-What are their strengths and their weaknesses?
-What potential opportunities do they provide?
-What threats do they pose?
-What do they use for advertising purposes?

From these answers should stem a comprehensive plan focusing on what your company should do to gain or maintain competitive advantage.

What types of competitor are there?

There are a range of competitors that businesses may come across when competing in a market, some of which include:

Market Leader: The market leader, which is an organization, product, or brand, has the greatest percentage of sales revenue in a particular market. This type of competitor may not be the main competitor to your business, however.
Market Challengers: Although not the most successful competitors in the market, they are still a very dangerous part of a market. With most challengers working hard to gain more of a market share, competing with this type of business, product, or brand, is no easy task.
Market Followers: This type of competitor will follow the trends and decisions of the market leader, avoiding an risky or volatile decision-making. It refrains from disruption and rarely challenges a market leader.
Market Nichers: Simply put, this is a type of competitor that makes niche products for a niche audience. This means that they will be specific and highly customized in their products. These competitors, again, rarely partake in confrontation with larger organizations, although they are able to generate high profits.

Helping you pay attention to what is happening outside your organisation

As important as it is to keep focused on what is going on inside your company, competitor analysis is designed to help you improve. If you don’t look externally, you will fall behind internally by not keeping up to date with the market’s players and their activities.

Companies should organize their schedules in a way that will ensure company time is being balanced appropriately between analyzing competitors and incorporating what they’ve learned, along with ensuring that their priorities are in order.

What are the methods, models, frameworks and tools used to do a Competitor Analysis?

There a quite a lot of methods, models, frameworks and tools that can be used to carry out a competitor analysis for your company. Strategy Consulting firms, Strategy Professors and Academics as well as industry professionals have build many of them over the years. You can find some of them here in the Eloquens Catalog below. Feel free to have a look! You will perhaps find the ideal competitor analysis template or examples which will help you build your own tools.

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