Competitive Research is one of the most fundamental processes businesses conduct to improve their business strategies and implement new ideas and products in their business. It uses multiple tools like keyword tool, social media platforms, backlinks, etc., to create competitive research for its organization.
Thus, taking the above points into consideration, we have put up the fundamental components required for competitive analysis. Let’s move further to know about it in detail.
What Is Competitive Research?
Competitive research is a repetitive activity of comparing your business to that of the competitors. Moreover, competitive research conducted appropriately tends to reduce the risk related to business plans and ideas, says Pharmaknowl, who provide market research services in Saudi Arabia.
Crucial Components Of Competitive Research
SWOT Analysis
Many departments of an organization tend to perform a SWOT analysis for making essential business decisions (more info here). As a part of competitive research activity, it can be done both in inward and outward directions, and either way, businesses use the same elements of SWOT analysis, that are:
Strength
In strength, you can look for the competitors who are doing well in the industry and enjoying the advantages of all manpower, resources, assets, and many more.
Weakness
By analyzing the weakness, you get insight into what the company is not doing well, where they are outpaced in the market, and what resources they are lacking.
Opportunities
Opportunities let you set the area and opportunity for your business to grow in the market.
Threats
Threats let you concentrate on the new competitors coming into the market, changes in the laws, regulations, and standards of the marketplace, and what are the aspects that are harmful to the business.
SWOT analysis has been a crucial aspect of the business for a long time. Implementing it into your competitive research allows you to gain more insight into the things you can utilize to compete with your rivals.
Mapping Customer’s Journey
In today’s business world, customer-centricity is becoming one of the crucial aspects of the business. Digital marketing has given buyers more information and options they can choose from. The way enterprises treat their customers directly impacts their rise or downfall.
With the help of a customer’s journey mapping, you can identify buyers and various contingencies in the market. Follow the four basic activities for journey mapping.
- Identifying the levels customers are undertaking.
- Determining the actions taken by the customers in the journey.
- Identifying the touchpoints like interactions between the buyers and the sellers.
- Assists those touchpoints to the departments best suited to assist the customer in their buying journey.
Five Forces Of Porter
Five competitive forces, identified by Michael Porter, help to determine the profitability of a company. It directly related the business from its competitive potential to compete in the market. The data and success metric is rare to your situation; the forces are applicable to any industry of the world.
The forces include:
- Competitive rivalry
- Seller power
- Buyer power
- Substitution threat
- New Entry Threat
Each of these five forces is relevant to competitive research. Thus, figuring out the location of your data, harvesting it, and then analyzing it becomes a significant part of the way you choose to approach the market.
Business Models
The three most significant strategic activities a business is willing to undertake include mapping, designing, and managing business models. These processes are simplified with the help of different competitive research tools.
While you model a business strategy, CI data takes the competitors into account and informs the visualization process, and outlines the crucial strategy that can be beneficial for increasing revenue, says Forbes.
Different business models vary in different industries. Those business models are informed by price and costs that are part of competitive research. However, the similar products and services priced differently in the market serve as an essential piece of information that works well for your corporate strategy.
Business models work beyond CI and are subjected to testing cycles frequently. A business that is well-versed about the competitors remains a vital aspect of a business model.
Conclusion
A tried and accepted framework for competitive research tends to be very useful for a business. However, the success of your efforts is totally based on the accuracy of the data you have collected and the ability of the researchers to look at the insight of the data and work accordingly.
Leave a Comment