Develop a strategy for a firm to make sure it’s products always stay a big step
ID: 1198545 • Letter: D
Question
Develop a strategy for a firm to make sure it’s products always stay a big step ahead of its present competitors and also ahead of anyone else who threatens to come into their markets and compete with it. Try to select an existing firm that you can research and then look at all the ways the company can try to innovate, use skilled marketing techniques, make use of market imperfections where possible, form alliances to obtain new patents, and more. Develop a series of steps your firm can take and after you have examined your list, express the overall strategy that you can see emerging from your list. When you then put the strategy into execution, you will have to be careful about not violating anti-trust laws in the US and internationally as well. So do not plan on doing something that might violate the laws.
Explanation / Answer
1)Gathering data on all of your competitors could, in itself, be a full-time job. To make it easier on yourself, you should realize up front that tracking each and every competitor every day of the week is probably an impossibility. Therefore, you should break your competition into categories and prioritize them, asking yourself who poses the biggest threat. The following are suggested ways to categorize your competitors:
1: Head-to-Head Competitors
These are the companies that compete most directly with you. Your product is similar. Customers compare you to them in terms of price, quality and service. These companies should be tracked on a weekly basis.
2: First-Tier Competitors
These folks compete with you, but not for everything. They may try to woo a particular kind of customer from you, or they may be similar to you only in a certain area. This is an important group to stay on top of because they may decide to expand and compete with you more directly. You should track them at least one to two times per month.
3: Indirect Competitors
These competitors tend to be in the background. You only run into them occasionally. Their products usually serve as alternatives to yours. But make no mistake about it, these companies are still definite competitors, vying for business. They need to be watched because there is no telling what rabbits they might pull out of their hats when you least expect it. It's better to be prepared.
2)Gather all the maximum available data regarding compititors from different sources for example newspapers , seminars .customers,trade shows, employees etc.
3) identify your customers: once you have a handle on your compititors,the next important step is to define the customer base.
4)Differentiation:In todays market customers have lots of choices. To gain competitive advantage you must give consumers a reason to choose you over competion
5)Price: Where there are those consumers who spend top dollar on any given product ,most people are proce consious. It is important to recognize that you may not always be abe to be the lowest price service but still maintain a healthy profit margin.
6) Product: product or service is evrything without it buisiness is nothing ,it is what you entire reputation is based on.
7) marketing strategies: Look at the companies with somilar products and analyze how they have marketted . develop new ways of marketing and attracting customers.
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