How do you compare your product with competitors and alternatives using user research?

A key component of competitive analysis is what's known as "feature gap analysis." This is where a product manager lists down features of their own product alongside those of competitors to identify any gaps in offerings. While it's a common practice to identify what features the competitors have that you don't, it can often be more insightful to determine which features you offer that competitors don't. Because these unique features can become your product's unique selling proposition.

Analogous to a sports coach understanding the opposing team's strengths, weaknesses, and strategies is helpful to position the product and the business in the market, considering internal and external factors. My tip is to avoid assuming your business has no competition or is superior; the market changes quickly.

That is indeed a vital step in understanding your product's position in the market and identifying areas for improvement and differentiation. Competitive analysis is an essential component of strategic planning and product development. It helps you make informed decisions, allocate resources effectively, and maintain a competitive edge in the market. By understanding your product's strengths and weaknesses in comparison to alternatives, you can refine your offerings and better meet the needs of your target audience.

Competitive Analysis is very critical and needs to be done with different angles. 1) What is your current landscape? 2) Who are the key players? 3) What kind of offerings do they have and are they applying democratization plan ? 4) What is the USP of each offering? Leading Benefits and complimentary? 5) Which ones are critical for the consumer you are targeting ? 4) What is the consumer experience level of these offerings? 5) How is their execution on the shop floor? 6) Are they currently winning? 7) what would be their next move by the time you launch your product ? 8) what do consumers say about their current solutions? 9) Where are they losing?

Put yourself in your customers' shoes. 1 - Use search engines and social media platforms to see what people are talking about 2 - Engage in conversations with clients to glean insights about competitors and potential product improvements. 3 - Use comprehensive spreadsheets to record and analyze data (i like to use CSD matrix) 4 - The analysis should support every phase of the product lifecycle.

Creating a product people like is like making the yummiest ice cream. Imagine you have different flavors, colors, and textures. It's hard to choose, right? That's where trade-offs come in - you might love chocolate flavor but prefer the texture of strawberry. Companies use a cool tool called "conjoint analysis" to understand what people like the most. It's like asking your friends their favorite ice cream combo. Is it chocolate with rainbow sprinkles or vanilla with caramel swirls? By learning everyone's favorites, you can make the tastiest ice cream!

I love Clay Christensen's Jobs to be done framework because it keeps the focus of the PM on the user PROBLEM. Very often PMs get defensive and start arguing with people why their solution is better. PMs tend to be biased towards their product to the extent that they can become hammers looking for a nail. To avoid this problem and keep humble, always ask yourself - fundamentally, what problem of my user is my product solving? Ask this question periodically and spot check your answers with real users. People's jobs evolve with time, as does the solution set for those jobs (your competitors). Define your job broadly to escape the myopic trap of Blockbuster who defined the job as "renting DVDs" vs. "entertainment" and got killed.

More importantly, interviews, as part of the Jobs to be done (JTBD) framework, help you identify causal mechanisms behind user decisions. E.g. understand at what moment in time a user decides something needs to change (flipping moment) and how they go about choosing a solution. From experience, 8–12 interviews are generally enough to understand causal mechanisms. Here, the aim is not to reach statistical significance, and therefore we do not need a large sample. Jobs to be done is about going deep to get a granular understanding of users' circumstances and struggles. It provides rich context and significantly improves confidence in decision-making for PMs.

I have used the value prop canvass extensively. You can order a large size stack of blank canvasses on Amazon to help you iterate quickly on those (the complex format is sometimes a challenge to replicate). The most useful part of it are the user's pains, gains and jobs to be done. I and my teams have used sticky notes to write our notes and observations from user interviews and then we go together in a room and stick those on either the "gains", "pains" or "jobs" sheet. Then we spot patterns and consolidate the pains, gains and jobs. It's a great exercise and everyone gets very clear on what's important vs. what's noise.

Before jumping into competitive analysis, it is crucial to frame what it is we're trying to uncover. A framing workshop is often the best way to start as it allows team members to align on where they need more clarity. Another good practice is to adopt decision-based research, i.e. asking yourself what decisions will I be able to unlock once I have the results of this research. This helps in significantly reducing the probability of creating disposable research (the research report that eventually dies on somebody's Google Drive).