First, Direct Competitors
Check the Yellow Pages or call the Chamber of Commerce to uncover local competition. Visit a library and try Gale Research’s Encyclopedia of Associations, Ulrich’s Guide to International Periodicals, and the Thomas Register of Manufacturers guides that can put you in touch with professionals in related industries.
Indirect Competition
Find the businesses with missions unrelated to yours that are competing for the dollars you want. Find out what else your potential customers spend their money on, and learn how you can woo them to spend it on your product.
More Resources
- Business publications, directories and databases at the library
- Back issues of community newspapers—competitor ads, employment ads, executives’ participation in community associations
- Annual reports
- Online databases
- The competitors themselves
Gathering information on the competition is not about spying or stealing secrets. Rather, it’s about carefully analyzing and learning from what the competition is doing.
In its Competitive Intelligence Guide, Fuld & Company states that “wherever money is exchanged, so is information.” Any company that deals with the outside world “inadvertently throws down informational bridges over the moat, allowing outsiders to peek into its operations…The world’s mightiest multinationals hire and fire, open facilities, deal with suppliers, negotiate with national, state and local governments, attend scientific conferences and present papers.” Electronic databases, CD-roms and other new information vehicles give everyone virtually equal access to corporate intelligence.
- You must find information; it does not find you. You can’t wait until the last minute to seek out the information you need.
- Intelligence is constant. You must track your competition constantly, otherwise you may misinterpret what you find.
- Competitive assessment is a 3-D picture. Just as competitors change, so does their competitive environment.
Full text
Phyl Speser of Foresight Science & Technology agrees that there are always competitors out there. “If there is a need, the odds are people are doing something to meet it already. There is always a competing technology or product or way. It may just be hand labor—hiring immigrants as an alternative to mechanized picking.
The point is, if there is no need, there is no market and the product doesn’t stand a chance. If there is a need, people are usually try to address it, and you just have to hope they are doing so poorly. Then people are open to change.
