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CREATING JOBS CHANGINGLIVES

Next-Generation Fellowship Program

Competitive Advantage

https://www.wfglobal.org

WADHWANIFOUNDATION|CREATINGJOBSCHANGINGLIVES
Overview of the
program and your
learning journey over
the 14 weeks:
 CONCEPTS
● Understand your competition
● Howto collect infoaboutyourcompetition,whereto start from?
● Howto run a competitive analysis
● What are the points of comparison youshould include?
● Howto categorize competition
● Howunderstandingyour competition contributes to
your company’ssuccess

By the end of the week

you willbe ableto:
● Build a differentiable and
sustainable competitive
advantage
Steps:
1. Identify direct and indirect
competitors
2. Research and apprise your
competition
3. Conduct a Competition
Analysis
4. Identify your Competitive
WADHWANIFOUNDATION|CREATINGJOBSCHANG Advantage
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The importance of
understanding
competition
Competition Competitive
Identify Research& Advantageand
Apprise Analysis sustainable
differentiation

There is nothing known as a level playing field and business is all about creating an
unfair advantage. However, business is also not a zero-sum game – which means
that you don’t necessarily have to lose for me to win.

The trick is in creating a space where you can exist, sustain and grow steadily.
Before, we get started read this article on How Amazon thinks about Competition.

How Amazon Thinks About Competition - by Jeff Bezos

HBR Review

Let’s begin by understanding how you can determine who is your competitor and
who is not.
Competition
Entrepreneur.com

Understanding your competition is agreat way to come up with ideas. For example,
better market penetration strategy, customer acquisition strategies and brand
positioning could be inspired from competition.

Simply put, if youcollect enough info about your competition, youalready have a
reference on howtheyarerunning their business, howtheybuilt their product, howthey
distribute it
and otherinfo that can generally benefit you.

10 ways competition can improve your business

Entrepreneur.com

A generalrule is, competition will alwaysexist, except in veryfewcases whenyouare

the first one to go to market. Even in similar cases you probably have indirect
competition. In this part, youwill learn in-depth about the importance of running a
competitive analysis,howto do it andhowit could potentially impact yourbusiness.

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Identify,Research&Apprise
Research& Competition Competitive
Identify Advantageand
Apprise Analysis
sustainable
differentiation

It is time to go get some data from the market about your competition. What is
important is to know how to collect the info. Worsethannot knowing about the
competition is collecting the wrong info. It could be misleading and lead to negative
results.
Here are a few questions that you are trying to answer:

• What is the state of the target market? How large is it and how many
companies dominate it?
• What are the odds of surviving in the given niche?
• What promotional channels do your rivals use?
• What are the target audience interests and how do different companies try to
engage with them?

Step 1: Identify the players (60 mins) – Direct and Indirect comepitiors Google:
Your brand isn’t what you say it is, it’s what Google says it is”, – British
businessman, Chris Anderson once said. This rule applies to all, so to find who your
greatest competitors are, you can just ask the biggest search engine in the world.
Run additional searches on portals such as Staista, Alternative to and Owler

Take stock of the names that come up in your keyword search and then find more
about these companies through other sources such as Statisa, Pi Diametrics, SEM
Rush Market explorer etc.
Outcome – identify minimum 5 and maximum 10 players to conduct your
competitor analysis.

Step 2: Analyze your competitors:

Go through their website and gather information on the following parameters:
- Product offering
- Unique Value proposition
- Pricing
- Market reviews
- Branding: How well known the brand is

Outcome: Gather data to complete your competition analysis

Know Your Competition
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Entrepreneur.com 5
Analyse your Research& Competition
Competitive
Advantageand

competition
Identify
Apprise Analysis sustainable
differentiation

The next stepis to projectthe datathat you have gathered and give it a structured,
intelligent formatso that you can createa compelling competitive advantage.Given below
are examplesof somemistakesthat start-upsmakewhile putting togethertheir analysisand
a decent preliminary competition analysiscan be done.

An example of decent preliminary competition analysis

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Analyseyour
Competitive
Research& Competition Advantageand
Identify
Apprise Analysis sustainable
differentiation

competition
A Direct competitor is someone that offers the same
products, with in the same category as you”
Direct

Eg: McDonald’s and Burger King

An Indirect competitor is a business that sells a product or

service in the same category as you, but it’s different enough Replacement Indirect
to act as a substitute for your product or service.

Eg. McDonald’s and Subway.

A Replacement competitor is a business that sells a product or service that’s

both different in category and type than you, but one which your customers
could choose to spend their money instead.

Eg: McDonald’s and ready to eat / frozen dinner meal

To get ahead in the game, a business needs to survive the competitive

landscape , and this requires the business to create a competitive advantage.

Competitive advantage generates greater value for customer and the business
due to certain strengths or conditions. The more sustainable the competitive
advantage, the more difficult it is for competitors to neutralize the advantage.

5 sources of competitive advantage to drive growth

Harvard Business School

Competition is for Losers with Peter

Thiel
Peter Thiel, Y Combinator

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Create your
Competitive Competitive
Competition Advantageand

Advantage
Identify Research&
Apprise Analysis sustainable
differentiation

Reduce

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Create your
Competitive Competition Competitive
Research&

Advantage and
Identify Advantageand
Apprise Analysis sustainable
differentiation

Sustainable
differentiation

Reduce

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 Competition Competitive
Identify Research& Advantageand
Apprise Analysis sustainable
differentiation

Create your
competitive advantage
Once you have mapped your current offering and compared it with your competitors it’s
time to take a hard look at your product features. Each additional product feature take s
time and money so you to have a very clear prioritization based on:
1. Customer needs
2. Competitor offering
3. Your solution - product features

Keep these side by side and then fill out the following grid:
Create Enhance
Create – features that customers value but are not offered by competition
Enhance – features that strengthenyour value proposition
Reduce – features that do not add value your proposition
Reduce Eliminate
Eliminate – features that are redundant

Amazon’s Competitive Advantage

Interview with Jeff Bezos

How to develop your competitive advantage

Forbes

Collecting and analysing data from the competitive

analysis will help you further understandyour
competitionandhaveaclear advantagethatwill make
you stand out and provide a better solution for your
customers.

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 Call toaction!
Step 1: Competition Listing Template

Competitors

Direct Competitors Indirect Competitors

Step 2: Competition Analysis Template

C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 Your
Direct Direct Direct Indirect Indirect Venture

Product
Benefits

UVP

Price

Branding

Market
Review

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 Call toaction!
Step 3: Feature Ranking

Create Enhance

Reduce Eliminate

Step 4: Why would the Customer switch to my product?

• Reason 1

• Reason 2

• Reason 3

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FINAL COVER

nextgen.global@wfglobal.org

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