Competitor Research

Benchmark yourself against the competition

What is the purpose of competitor research?

The purpose of competitor research is to benchmark yourself against the competition to gain invaluable insight into areas such as their price points, customer service levels, customer journey and online experience. It may be that you are struggling in a specific area and want to find out how your competitors are overcoming this challenge, or you might be exploring bringing a new product or service to market and want to make sure that your competitors don’t already offer the same product or service. Either way, competitor research is invaluable to the continuous development of your business.

What are the benefits of competitor analysis?

Knowing how and where your competitors pitch their products or services will give you an advantage when you review your own cost structure or service levels. For example, if you are getting feedback that a competitor offers a better level of service or better value for money, carrying out competitor analysis will tell you how they are offering a better level of service or better value for money.

What you do with this information is what holds the most value. Whilst we are not suggesting you copy exactly what your competitors are doing, the information should encourage internal discussions and reviews to identify how you can improve your service levels or change your price points to offer a better value.

How often should you benchmark yourselves against your competitors?

Competitor benchmarking can be done at any point to measure areas that you might be reviewing within your own business. Start-up companies typically conduct competitor research during the very early set-up stages to find out if there are, and how many, other companies in their market space, as well as making sure they are pitching their service or product at the right level, based on what is going on within the industry.

If you are considering launching a new product or service to your clients, this would be the perfect time to conduct competitor research. The research will tell you if there are any competitors already offering this product or service and if there are, how they are offering it.

What’s the best way to conduct competitor analysis?

The best way to conduct competitor analysis is via a market research agency that has experience in this area. Using a research agency will allow for a completely unbiased opinion and provide the most valuable data output. As a starting point, the research agency will support you with identifying a minimum of 3 key competitors to benchmark yourselves against, as well as design the criteria for the competitor analysis based on the desired data output. There are multiple ways to conduct competitor analysis, with the most common being desk research or mystery shopping. A research agency will recommend the most appropriate research method based on the feedback required.

My View Research

At My View Research we have carried out competitor research for a number of well-known brands including Sky Mobile, Lok’nStore, LavAzza, Volkswagen Passenger Cars and Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles.