Ultimately, the goal of competitive analysis is to help you predict what your competitors will do in the future. In some cases, the most important question is whether a competitor will respond to decisions you make.

For example, will a competitor react if you enter a customer segment that the competitor presently serves? Or, will a competitor react if you decide to change your strategy by emphasizing or de-emphasizing certain key customer benefits, or decide to increase your advertising expenditures? In other cases, you may have some assumptions about actions (even unprovoked actions) your competitor might make in the future.

These questions should be directly applied to each segment that was analyzed during customer analysis (see the How to Segment a Market tutorial). There we found that perhaps to compete successfully in a segment, certain benefits would need to be addressed and communicated. Now ask yourself the question: What will the competitor do in response? The same can be done when considering entry into a new segment. Again, ask yourself: What will the competitor do in response?

These types of questions can be framed in terms of a game, since the actions of the two actors (i.e., you and your competitor) are typically interdependent. Thinking of business strategy in game-like terms has lately become more popular and rigorous. One recent article that deals with this subject is by Brandenburger, Adam and Barry J. Nalebuff (1995), “The Right Game: Use Game Theory to Shape Strategy,” Harvard Business Review (July-August), but the idea of games in competition goes back to far earlier times.

Consider, for example, how a chess player might first think through all the possible reactions of his or her opponent to various chess moves before finally moving a particular chess piece. Likewise, by thinking through all the possible reactions of your competitors to various actions you might take, and vice versa, will greatly improve your ability to make the right decision. Ultimately, the best way to think is backwards (starting with the desired end of the game). In fact, the way game theorists typically solve their problems is with backward induction!

Thinking backwards is very hard, so a good framework for helping you think through these possible reactions, and thus better predict competitive response, is to ask yourself whether the competitor is vulnerable to your action, will it provoke a response, and how effective this response would be, and do you have an effective counter-response? Likewise, are you vulnerable to actions your competitor might make, and do you have effective responses? By systematically asking yourself several questions you enhance your capabilities of predicting competitive response. Let's ask these questions as follows:

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image of Allen Weiss

Allen Weiss is MarketingProfs founder and CEO, positioning consultant, and emeritus professor of marketing. Over the years he has worked with companies such as Texas Instruments, Informix, Vanafi, and EMI Music Distribution to help them position their products defensively in a competitive environment. He is also the founder of Insight4Peace and the former director of Mindful USC.