Surpassing the Competition


Overview/Description
Target Audience
Expected Duration
Lesson Objectives
Course Number


Overview/Description
Who are you competing against? What are your competitors' capabilities? Competition plays a major role in corporate success. Failure to take into account your competition's strengths, weaknesses, capabilities, and strategies can leave your company vulnerable to unexpected competitive moves. This course presents you with the tools and methods for identifying competitors; collecting competitor information; creating a competitor SWOT matrix by determining a competitor's objectives, strategies, strengths, and weaknesses; and developing a competitor response profile by identifying a competitor's current strategy, capabilities, operating assumptions, and goals. These methods and tools will enable you to plan appropriate business strategies and successfully navigate today's highly competitive business environment.

Target Audience
Mid- to upper-level marketing managers, advertising managers or directors, brand and product managers, corporate and strategic planners

Expected Duration (hours)
3.0

Lesson Objectives

Finding Competitive Intelligence Information

  • recognize the benefits of acquiring useful information about competitors.
  • match three types of competition with examples.
  • match three major sources of competitive data with appropriate examples.
  • match the principal categories of competitor information with appropriate examples.

    • Developing a Competitive Intelligence System

  • recognize the benefits of developing a competitive intelligence system.
  • sequence the examples of stages in the competitive intelligence cycle.
  • apply the competitive intelligence cycle in a given scenario.
  • sequence examples of the guidelines for collecting information by interview.
  • apply the guidelines for collecting information by interview in a given scenario.

    • Tools for Organizing Competitor Information

  • recognize the benefits of using tools to organize competitor information.
  • match the parts of a competitor SWOT matrix with appropriate examples.
  • create a competitor SWOT matrix using data provided in a given scenario.
  • match the parts of a competitor response profile to examples of the types of information that belong in each part.
  • develop a competitor response profile using data provided in a given scenario.

    • Course Number:
    MKT0232