It’s important for new businesses to complete a competitive analysis during the business planning stage, but competitive intelligence can also be useful for marketing, pricing, managing and other strategic planning for retailers.

Before you can know your competitive edge, you must first know your competitor.

Competitive Analysis Questions:
Where is your competitor located?
What are the competitor’s strengths?
What are their weaknesses?
What are your competitor’s annual sales?
What is the company’s product line?
How do the products compare to yours, in terms of quality, appearance and any other criteria?
What is their price structure?
What are the company’s marketing activities?
What are the company’s supply sources for products?
Is the company expanding or cutting back?
What do they do better than you?
To answer these questions, retailers will need to do some detective work and gather competitive intelligence. Competition research and assessment doesn’t need to be complicated.
There’s no need to hire someone to do what you can do yourself, but consider employing research firms to find information that isn’t available publicly. Here are a few tools for acquiring competitive intelligence.

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Online Searches are a quick method of finding competitive information. However, this search will only provide information that has become public.
On-site observations of the competitor’s parking lot, customer service, volume and pattern of suppliers’ deliveries, etc. can yield useful information about the state of the competitor’s business.
Surveys and interviews can yield plenty of data about competitors and products. Research surveys and focus group interviews generally provide more in-depth perspectives from a limited sample.
Competitive Benchmarking is used for comparing the organization’s operations against those of the competitor’s. In making specific comparisons within an industry, an organization gains information about common marketing practices, available work force, and suppliers.
Put it to Work
The results of your competitive analysis establish the skills necessary to succeed in your retail business and define your distinct competitive advantage.
To benefit from your research, take as many weaknesses of your competitors as possible and turn them into potential strengths for your business. Narrow down your list to only those items that will give you the competitive edge. Be sure your list is:
Cost-effective and realistic
Planned to solve a particular problem or meet a specific need
Attractive to a niche market
If you begin a business without performing a competitive analysis, you run the risk of creating marketing tools and product or service offerings that they are way off the mark.
If you begin a business without performing a competitive analysis, you run the risk of creating marketing tools and product or service offerings that are way off the mark. This can cost you valuable time and money during the critical early months.
You should also plan to gather competitive intelligence as your business grows, in order to stay competitive. Competitive analysis is an ongoing process and retailers should always be gathering information about their competitors.

The astronomical growth of group buying websites such as Groupon and Livingsocial has been a major trend for 2010 — but what does the group buying market look like beyond the hype? This webinar will explore competitive intelligence and benchmarking as a way to understand what your competitors are doing online. The webinar will use Compete’s Online Channel Effectiveness (OCE) product to show how marketers can gain insights and competitive benchmarks to improve their performance across the entire online sales funnel. You will learn: • Why online marketers are flying blind without competitive intelligence. • The four key areas of the sales funnel you need to measure vs. your competitors. • Key metrics in each area of the sales funnel. • How leading marketers use competitive intelligence to driving marketing effectiveness.
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Best answer:

Answer by kemperk
since I have taught this:

a; write your biz plan,
b; take each assumption [statement] and see how true it/they are
by asking applicable “stakeholders.”
1. vendors
2. possible clients
3. possible competitors
4. possible employees
—
analyze probably amount of sales and what you plan on doing
to achieve same
–
determine start-up capital needs and defend same

you need to do both PRIMARY AND SECONDARY
research;
primary is asking people
secondary is reading data from any source.

Hope this is a good start. Get hold of me for more
help

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

Do-It-Yourself Market Research

Online market research agencies

Defense market research

It requires comprehensive coverage of the major defense sectors. One needs to do research on every part affecting the defense system. These are as below;

Aerospace, military budget, homeland security, military and civil aviation, space and satellites, missiles, military support vehicles (including unmanned vehicles), ordnance and ammunitions, naval surface and undersea systems, and military electronics systems.

Therefore, it’s not easy to conduct defense market research on your own as this is very critical unlike other researches. You can get help from an online market research company. A staff of seasoned professionals tracks many individual programs and produces a series of market intelligence services, analyses, and specialized news services.

Important sources

•Company information

•Announcements by government

•Independent & freely available sources

•Interviews with procurement officials and companies’ executives

How to start with defense market research

Get data on defense budgets of a country or make comparisons between budgets of various countries. Make real-time economic analysis of allocations and extract the results as a graphical display.

Interviews of defense professionals, merged with your data. The results reveal hidden trends, forward looking projections.

Find out how many pieces of a certain equipment or hardware exist in countries around the world. Get results as per force- i.e., army, navy, air force, marines, etc.

Get the latest information on acquisitions in relation to a specific defense force, equipment or project.

See how the military forces of different countries are organized. Select a country or countries to display their respective forces structure.

You must compare & analyze;

•Defense budgets

•Forces structures

•Equipment inventory

•Data of two different countries

•Procurement timelines

And, also make future projections.

Solar Market research

This research uncovers industry trends, competition, opportunities, projections, sales, and marketing strategies in areas such as photovoltaic, solar panels, renewable energy equipment, manufacturing, and emerging technologies. Hence, one must do the following things to conduct solar market research. A good research agency can help you in analyzing your type of market very well. Lucintel.com is one the best online market research agency, where you can get your kind of absolute research.

Use marketing magazines, government reports, trade journals, and chamber of commerce market profiles to determine the demographics of your market. Moreover, these publications provide data on current trends that will give you a good clue for your research.

If you have a Web site, start a chat room or message board and encourage people to participate. Use questionnaires, personal interviews and focus groups to get feedback on solar products.

Organize the research data you’ve collected and compare solar power with alternate energy sources. Re-valuate and determine your strategy based on the results.

Construction market research is very necessary to keep in mind while doing market research for defense and solar. We need to do construction market research to have an idea how is the construction graph for them, which affects our data and therefore should be included in our analysis.

Related Market Research Articles

I would appreciate any suggestions on other types of market research or confirmation that surveying is a good method and also how many people we should survey to make our data credible.

Best answer:

Answer by catface
target small businesses that use computers eg salons, grocery stores etc? since you are starting off .

Give your answer to this question below!

I need to create a survey/questionare and have a few hundred people answer it. Does anyone know how I can do this. Thank you very much.
Yes I am on a budget, but I can spend about $ 1,000. If I could spend less that would be great, but I do have a little money to spend.

Best answer:

Answer by virtualadmin
If you’re on a budget, then actual footwork is the best way to go. Dress nicely, then develop a very short but concise questionnaire. There are websites available but they are pricey, as well as there’s nothing like developing relationships with the public.
Also, the interviewee might be willing to give you their contact information, which you can use when you’re finally in business.

What do you think? Answer below!

Best answer:

Answer by Savvy Affiliate
I’m not a company, but I noticed that Online entities tend to use Forrester Research.

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

I need to create a survey/questionare and have a few hundred people answer it. Does anyone know how I can do this. Thank you very much.
Yes I am on a budget, but I can spend about $1,000. If I could spend less that would be great, but I do have a little money to spend.

I would appreciate any suggestions on other types of market research or confirmation that surveying is a good method and also how many people we should survey to make our data credible.