For developing a robust business strategy, a business must know its rivals before and more than itself. So, every company needs to understand the types of analysis and studies that they need to perform and the values that they can gain from it. Therefore, below have we gathered for you the 7 most important Competitive Intelligence studies and analyses that food aggregators should perform for gaining to understand the market and perform better than their competitors.

1. Competitor Identification Analysis

The first item in this checklist may seem self-evident, but you’d be shocked how many companies don’t know who their rivals are. Perhaps it’s more true to state that information isn’t always efficiently disseminated to the whole marketing team. Therefore, it’s important to know and identify your competitors and the threat they may pose to you as a business.

These types of analytical studies happen to highlight the possible advantages and disadvantages that you have over your competitors and make you aware of how it can affect your performance as well. There are 3 key benefits to identifying your competitors:

• You can pinpoint and focus on the benchmarks that you need to improve on as compared to your competitors.
• You can track your competitors and their market actions as well as stay prepared for them.
• You can understand your limitations as well as know about the actions that can affect your sales.

2. Knowing the Type of Competitors

Upon identifying your competitors, you can have a fair idea of where you lie in the market and what makes you different from your competitor. But the idea of whether a competitor of yours can directly affect, indirectly affect, or even replace your brand as an alternative is the key to strategizing your business model so as you can stay aware of your positions in the market. These studies can tell you the following things:

• If a business is a direct competitor to yours, i.e. they offer products and services entirely similar to the category and type that you offer.
• If a business is an indirect competitor to yours i.e. they offer products and services in the same category as yours but of different type, different enough to act as a substitute to yours.
• If a business is a replacement competitor to yours, i.e. they offer products and services entirely different than yours but the ones that can act as an instant replacement to yours.

3. Competitor Profiling Studies

This study requires you to compare your business directly to your competitors while keeping in focus a lot of different factors such as your pricing model, quality of services, brand image, brand value, customer service, etc. And when it comes to this study, what better process to perform this than taking customer reviews. As customers or more specifically dissatisfied customers are the ones that can exactly mention the differences between you and your competitors and let you know what factors you are possibly lacking behind.

4. Objective and Strategic Studies

This is easier said than done because your competitors are unlikely to post their playbooks publicly for all to see. In many situations, though, reading between the lines is not difficult. The tactics of your rivals might be revealed through online publishing. Read their press releases and, if their senior management publishes, read what they have to say about the market and industry, as well as any predictions they make.

5. Reviewing Your Competitors’ Content

Not only should you be alert when rivals grow to new client categories, such as SMBs and mid-sized businesses to enterprises, but you should also be aware when they extend to new buyer personas. If competitors begin marketing to a broader variety of target clients without your knowledge, the market share repercussions might be disastrous. Pay attention to your rivals’ content changes to prevent being caught off guard. The topic matter of a company’s prospect-facing material will nearly always mirror its buyer personas. If you find one of your rivals is generating content tailored for a new customer persona over time, it’s certainly worth looking into more.

6. Looking at Employee Reviews

Employee reviews, in a roundabout manner, can reveal a lot about where a firm is making the right investments and where it isn’t. Let’s say one of your competitors consistently receives bad feedback from their engineers. The final user experience provided by this firm will be subpar – and will most likely stay so for the foreseeable future. Positive evaluations, by the way, may be just as instructive. Let’s say one of your rivals consistently receives positive feedback from their customer success representatives. Although there isn’t a clear link, a positive customer service staff experience is likely to convert into a positive client experience.

7. News Coverage Study

You never want to miss news coverage about a rival, whether it’s favorable, bad, or neutral. News coverage, like a change in executive leadership, can signify a strategy shift. In certain situations, press coverage may also be used as a talking point to help people understand your value offer.

Conclusion

We, at MattsenKumar, provide the best Competitive Intelligence Services, assisting top worldwide businesses with specific quantitative and qualitative competitive intelligence techniques to handle a variety of issues. Our technology-enabled solutions assist businesses in gaining actionable information to solve their most pressing business problems. Our staff can help you with product enhancements, price strategies, market entrance, market coverage, and marketing tactics, that are specifically tailored and for businesses in the Food Aggregation industry. So, with MK, your Competitive Intelligence analysis and studies are well assisted in yielding greater benefits.