Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

Hi Luis,

Competitor intelligence is very important, and you are right to expand beyond their new products and features.

Price is a key issue to get competitive intelligence on:
a) what do customers really pay for your competitive products and how does the perceived cost of ownership compares with yours?
b) how do your competitors react when you change your price? In my master's disseration, I interviewed all competitors of a company and mapped out 1) whether they would react at all, 2) how strong they would react and 3) how fast they would react. The latter turned out to be key in getting a temporary competitive advantage with price cuts

Communication (probably what you refer to as 'marketing') is important as well: what are your competitors currently doing that is working well for them (especially in new marketing tools) and what can you learn from that? Which customers are they trying to acquire (from you?) and which of their customers

Distribution: which channels are they using successfully and what do distributors think about you and your products versus those of the competitors?

,大约覆盖了the 4 P's. In terms of marketing strategy (segmentation-targeting-positioning):
Which customers are they trying to acquire (from you?) and which of their customers could be ready to switch to you? Are your competitors changing their targeting and positioning in the current market conditions?

Most of these are available from publicly available data (eg competitor announcements, interviews, websites), others can be easily gathered by an intern.