How do enterprises do a good job in competitor analysis? Recently, Meng Jie Consulting Company conducted enterprise competitive strategy consultation for a large private enterprise group. When discussing and analyzing competitors with the management, I found an interesting phenomenon, which reminded me of an old fable "the blind man touches the elephant": the blind man who touches the elephant's legs thinks that the elephant is like a pillar, the blind man who touches the elephant's nose says that the elephant is like a boa constrictor, and the blind man who touches the elephant's body says that the elephant is like a wall ... Our consultant and the middle and senior leaders of this enterprise found that the sales manager talked a lot about how to establish a competitor's product price tracking system and pricing. Marketing managers are most concerned about competitors' brand positioning, market share, product range and depth, advertising expenses, distribution scope and so on. The production and operation manager pays great attention to the cost positioning, economic scale and supply chain of competitors' manufacturing bases; The R&D manager talked about the technical routes, key technologies, patents and innovation capabilities of many competitors. Company bosses are often more concerned about financial leverage, operating returns, cooperation and other content; The decision-makers in the headquarters of the group company are most concerned about the construction of the technology platform that affects the development of the group, the vertical integration degree of the group, the geographical coverage and location distribution of business entities, the cooperation between departments, and how the company can track and understand its competitors' capital operation means and acquisition routes, so as to analyze and evaluate its market positioning and core competitiveness.
First, the general method of competitor analysis
Generally speaking, an enterprise's analysis of competitors generally includes the following aspects: (1) Confirm the company's competitors. Broadly speaking, companies can regard companies that manufacture the same products or products of the same level as competitors. (2) Confirm the objectives of competitors. What are competitors looking for in the market? What is the driving force of competitors' behavior? In addition, we should also consider competitors' goals beyond the profit target, as well as competitors' target combinations, and pay attention to the targets used by competitors to attack different products/market segments. (3) Determine the strategies of competitors. The more similar a company's strategy is to that of other companies, the fiercer the competition between companies. In most industries, competitors can be divided into several groups and adopt different strategies. Strategic groups is a group of companies that adopt the same or similar strategies in a certain industry. Confirming the competitor's strategic groups will affect some important understandings and decisions of the company. (4) Confirm the strengths and weaknesses of competitors. This requires collecting information about competitors within a few years. Generally speaking, companies can find out the strength of competitors through second-hand materials, personal experiences and rumors. You can also conduct customer value analysis to understand this information. (5) Determine the reaction mode of competitors. Understanding competitors' goals, strategies, strengths and weaknesses is to explain their possible competitive behaviors and their reactions to the company's product marketing, market positioning and mergers and acquisitions, that is, to determine competitors' reaction patterns. In addition, competitors' special business philosophy, internal culture and guiding beliefs will also affect their reaction patterns. (6) Finalize the company's competitive strategy.
Second, determine the four dimensions of competitor analysis
However, according to our practical experience, in today's increasingly large-scale and internationalized market environment, generally speaking, before analyzing competitors, at what level, what type, which customer and market scope, and what time span, the phenomenon of "blind people touching the elephant" mentioned above may appear, and its practical utility will be greatly reduced. Therefore, we must first determine the dimensions of implementing competitor analysis, so as to determine where to start competitor analysis, which is the most effective and more helpful for the company's decision-making.
1. Decision hierarchy dimension
The first dimension to be determined before competitor analysis is the decision-making level dimension, that is, which business decision-making level of the enterprise determines to implement the competitor analysis task. The content of competitor analysis made by managers at different levels should be different. For example, the competitor analysis of enterprise product sales agent, the main purpose is to win the agent bidding; The competitor analysis of the sales manager mainly involves the price of competitors' products and predicts and evaluates their new price strategies; Managers of business departments or strategic business units conduct competitor analysis to establish their market position; The CEO of a company may be for strategic purposes such as mergers and acquisitions or enterprise expansion. Therefore, the pertinence and practicability of competitor analysis can only be guaranteed after the decision-making level is determined.
2. Decision type dimension
While determining the decision-making level dimension of competitor analysis, we can also distinguish it according to the decision-making type, such as operational type, tactical type and strategic type, which is the decision-making dimension. Please see the following figure-the relationship between management level and decision-making type.
It can be seen that top managers pay attention to the analysis of strategic competitors, middle functional managers pay more attention to the analysis of tactical competitors, while front-line managers pay most attention to the analysis of operational competitors.
3. Market/customer range dimension
The third dimension to consider when analyzing competitors is the dimension of customer and market scope, that is, defining and describing customers and markets in detail. The determination of customers and market scope is very important for the use value of analysis results. For example, a multinational automobile manufacturer's analysis of customers and competitors in Beijing is different from the analysis of customers and competitors in China as a whole, especially in Asia and the world. The following is a diagram of the relationship between the geographical scope, related industries and strategic development measures of a domestic large (multinational) electrical installation equipment manufacturer.
It can be seen that the competitor analysis of this enterprise is carried out in different geographical areas, and its coverage content and industry scope are very different, so the complexity of the analysis will be very different.
4. Time span dimension
The determination of the time span of competitor analysis is also the content of this work. How long is the historical analysis of competitors and their industries and the analysis of their future development? For example, did the analysis of Haier's competitors in the European market begin in the early 20th century? Does a moon cake manufacturer analyze the sales price dynamics of competitors in recent years, or only analyze the price trend during the Mid-Autumn Festival this year to determine the competitive strategy for next year or in the next few years? These are the first things to be defined in competitor analysis.
Third, the competitor analysis method
After determining the above aspects, what should we usually do to analyze our competitors? Our experience is that we should first track the identified competitors, collect their information, and try our best to grasp their business trends and possible impact on the company. In addition, we can also think backwards, that is, what impact the company's business strategy may have on competitors. This requires enterprises to establish a system-competitor information collection system, which can collect and record competitor information in an orderly manner and can be called at any time. On the basis of data collection, enterprises should conduct special research on the data regularly. For example, when enterprises intend to take competitors as acquisition targets or strategic partners, they need to analyze and study relevant information. For another example, from the continuous data collection, it is found that competitors have invested heavily in a certain field or recruited a large number of scientists in a short time. What is its purpose? Special research can help enterprises analyze and answer these questions. Another function of competitor information collection is to analyze and compare competitors' management performance and ability, so as to urge them to improve their management and performance.