Your Competition Isn't Your Competitor

Competitor analysis is one of the core activities of the strategic planning process. If it is not executed effectively, we will fail to understand the competitive threats faced by our business and so will find it impossible to mitigate or to defend against those threats with any degree of success. And yet this important section of the strategic plan is often surprisingly weak. Typically, it focuses only on the short term threats implied by the activities of our immediate rivals. This leaves us vulnerable to nasty surprises and medium to long term dangers. This critically important problem was addressed 30 years ago when Michael Porter developed his 5-forces model, but, written as it is from an economist’s perspective, it is often neglected by business strategists. When used well, however, Porter’s concept answers the three key questions we need to know: Who are our competitors? Which ones threaten us most? How should we defend against them? In this article, with full acknowledgement to Porter’s seminal work, I describe how to improve your own competitive analysis and find answers to those important questions.

This is the beginning of an article published in "Chartered Marketer". If you're a first level contact and you would like a PDF of the whole piece, please share this post with your network and I'll send it to you.