Expert Competitor & Market Analysis with the help of a dedicated team.

By analyzing your competition, and monitoring them on an ongoing basis, you will get to know their behavior, enabling you to anticipate their actions and stay one step ahead.

Competitive analysis is a type of strategic research, that consists in collecting and analyzing information about all the players in a particular niche. This is an essential tactic in finding out what your competitors are doing and the type of threat they represent to your organization’s financial well-being.

Even if at first glance the product or service you bring to market is innovative, the chances are that there might be others who already offer it. Even if you do not have direct competitors, you should consider the indirect competition and the possibility of substitutes and newcomers. This kind of in-depth analysis of the competitive forces is carried out by Porter’s Force analysis.

According to Inc.com , competitive analysis is:

The process of gathering and analyzing information about strengths and weaknesses of competitors in a legal and ethical manner to improve business decisions. Activities specific to this type of research can be grouped into two main types:
a) Short-term tactics that address issues such as increasing market share or increasing revenue;
b) Strategic, long-term focusing on the main risks and opportunities with which the organization interacts.

Your context

At a business level, competition analysis will mean different things for different people.

For example, for someone working in sales, it may be the analysis of sales strategy (resulting in concrete ideas on how to address customers more effectively).

For someone in marketing, it may mean analyzing the positioning strategy used to gain market share.

Here are some questions that competitive analysis will answer:

• What are the dynamics of the market – your current market or the one that you’re planning on entering?
• Who are the main competitors in the market? What market shares do they have?
• How do players position themselves in the market?
• What is the marketing / communication / sales strategy of your competitors in the market?
• If you launch a new product / service, who will be your direct competitors?
• How satisfied are the customers of your competitors?
• What can you do best to satisfy your customers?
• Why can new opportunities in the market take advantage?
• What are your business’s strengths and weaknesses when compared to your competition?

Our approach to competitive intelligence

Even if you can find quite a lot of information about your competitors online, competitive analysis goes much further than just a Google search.

In saying this, we start from the premise that really useful information is not necessarily available online.

Competitive intelligence will include information and analysis from a pool of methods and sources. These include, besides Google search, analysis of media presence, fairs and conferences, as well as information from official documents and other public information.

In specific cases, we can also conduct in-depth interviews with competitors or industry experts, such as mystery shopping B2B sessions.

Competition analysis research results

After researching their competitors, our customers have access to information about players in the marketplace, which helps them to define their positioning strategy, sales strategy, or to address new opportunities.

Here are some of the concrete results you will benefit from, through a competitive analysis by MKOR consultants:

• Market dynamics. Whether you are already active on a market or you are planning on entering a new niche, competition analysis will help you to better understand the mechanisms.
• Current market makers. You already know some of them, others you don’t. A professional analysis will give you a complete map with up-to-date information on each of your competitors.
• Positioning competitors. By understanding their strategy, you will learn how to position your brand in terms of price, communication and target audience.
• Proper strategy. Having a proper view of your competition will help you align your business to properly serve the market
• Successful launch. Whether you want to launch a business, a business line, or a new product, it is important to know who your competitors will be.
• Increased satisfaction. Your customers will benefit directly from the changes you will implement, and their satisfaction will translate into business growth.
• New opportunities. By analyzing what others are doing, ideas will arise on what to do differently and how to innovate in order to bring value to your customers.
• Understanding strengths and weaknesses. By analyzing the businesses you compete with, you will understand what differentiates you , but also what you need to improve.

With all this information, we can put together a competitive strategy, that highlights your strengths — which generally align with the weaknesses from your competition.