Strategist's Toolkit: Competitor Analysis

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Del curso dictado por University of Virginia

Business Strategy in Practice (Project-centered Course)

88 calificaciones

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University of Virginia

Business Strategy in Practice (Project-centered Course)

88 calificaciones

Curso 5 de 5 en SpecializationBusiness Strategy

A Capstone Project is an assignment designed specifically to apply and showcase the skills you learned in the Specialization. To this end, the Business Strategy Capstone Project, a comprehensive Strategic Analysis, provides an opportunity for you to synthesize concepts and knowledge from the four prerequisite courses in the specialization. You may continue with the organization you selected for previous assignments or select a new organization for this project. You will analyze the current state of the organization, strategic issues facing the organization, strategic paths the organization might pursue, make a recommendation of the best path for the organization to pursue, and write an Executive Summary. Your finished project will serve as an artifact showcasing your ability to conduct research on/within an organization, select and apply the most appropriate analytical tools, build a well-supported case for a specific position, and effectively communicate key points with executive leadership.

De la lección

Welcome and Getting Started

Welcome to the Business Strategy in Practice project-centered course and congratulations on completing the four prerequisite courses! In this course, you will bring together all that you have learned and employ your toolkit to develop your comprehensive Strategic Analysis. To get started, watch our "Welcome to the Business Strategy in Practice" video lecture. Then, read our Course Overview so you get a sense of what's ahead, including four milestones to help keep you on track to complete your project within the eight weeks. We are excited to watch you put your learning into action! Good luck, work hard, encourage one another, and enjoy!

Strategist's Toolkit: SWOT Analysis2:04

Strategist's Toolkit: Competitor Analysis2:48

Strategist's Toolkit: Environmental Analysis3:00

Strategist's Toolkit: Five Forces Analysis4:45

Strategist's Toolkit: Competitive Life Cycle Analysis3:00

Strategist's Toolkit: Stakeholder Analysis4:16

Strategist's Toolkit: Capabilities Analysis2:51

Strategist's Toolkit: Strategy Maps4:16

Conoce a los instructores

Michael Lenox
Senior Associate Dean and Chief Strategy Officer
Darden School of Business
Jared Harris
Samuel L. Slover Research Chair in Business Administration
Darden School of Business

Hello, let's discuss a competitor analysis.

A competitor analysis is a fundamental analysis in any analysis of strategy.

Very simply, it's an identification of your various competitors, and

then collecting information about their performance and capabilities and the like.

In the little table you see here is a simple way of recording some of this data.

Again, identify the focal firm that you're analyzing, perhaps your own firm, and

then list out some of your competitors.

Go out and collect information on them.

Perhaps, performance metrics.

If they're publicly traded companies, you might be able to find some information on

their revenues, and profitabilities, and the like.

Maybe dig a little deeper,

try to understand what are some of their capabilities?

What are their objectives and values,

getting to the mission-oriented piece that we've talked to previously?

And then finally, what is their strategy?

How are they positioning themselves?

What's their business model?

Now once again, on the surface,

competitor analysis seems relatively straightforward and simple.

In reality, it can be actually quite difficult.

The first step in any analysis is to then identify what's the industry?

Again, this might seem very straight forward but think about that in terms of

let's say Google, how would you define Google's industry?

The second step then is to layout who are their competitors?

Again this can be rather challenging.

Both you want to identify current competitors but

also try to identify who might become future competitors.

Take the automotive industry, for example.

If you're analyzing Porsche,

is it useful to do a full competitor profile on let's say, Kia?

Clearly, they're both in the automotive industry.

But maybe at the end of the day,

because of differences in terms of where they position themselves in the market,

you might not need to consider Kia as in great a depth as you might need to

consider someone else like Ferrari or another maker of luxury sports cars.

So once again, on the surface competitor analysis could be rather straightforward,

but at the heart of it there's a number of kind of fundamental questions you need

to ask.

I would suggest thinking about strategic groups.

Can you group various competitors by their similarity?

Maybe there's a set of companies in the automotive industry that are positioned

exclusively as luxury sports cars.

Maybe there's another group of companies that are diversified and

have both luxury sports cars and other cars as well.

Use this concept of strategic groups to then prioritize the various competitors

that you want to analyze, and once you have that prioritization

then you can spend more time focusing on those closer in competitors.

But keep your eye for out for those other competitors that may be a little farther

afield that may become more relevant in the future.

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