We have found that the key is to have a focus. Here’s the logic we apply to this search for a focus: “None of a competitor’s physical, technical, financial and marketing resources and capabilities can make for a competitive difference and advantage without someone orchestrating, navigating and controlling them.” So what is the implied focus?
Know your competitor’s face. Who is the brand manager, the marketing director or the marketing VP of your major competitor? What is he like in responding and/or attacking his brand’s leading competitor brand/s?
To know your competitor’s face and answer the preceding questions, it’s obvious that you have to profile this person’s competitive style. In our competitor profiling experience, we have found at least four competitive styles.
The first is what we call “the indifferent competitor.” This competitor will respond to you with this almost complacent mindset: “I have loyal customers and they’ve stayed that way for a long time. As long as I do everything to keep them loyal, that’s my best protection against any competitor.” So what can you predict about how this competitor will react to your moves? Most obviously and most likely, no reactions will be forthcoming at all.
The second competitive style is the “Hamlet” competitor. This one will respond but he or she will do so after a long, long time. This competitor’s brain works like Shakespeare’s character, Hamlet, and therefore thinks this way: “To compete or not to compete. That is the question. … But maybe it’s better to wait. In 80 percent to 90 percent of the cases, nothing really bad comes out of these competitor moves. So most of the time, I’m better off waiting things out.”
So what can you predict about how this competitor will react to your moves? It’s likely that the reactions will come after a long period of time.
The third competitive style we’ve seen is in a “game, fun-loving” competitor. This competitor looks at marketing life as a game of fun. He or she expresses this outlook along this script: “I love this competitive game. That’s especially fun when I’m playing against a worthwhile adversary who knows what he’s doing. At first he wins, and I lose. But I learn why I lost and come back. Then I win, and he loses. He learns, and then he comes back. And the cycle repeats and afterwards, we both are better off as competitors than at the start.” So we ask again: What can you predict about how this competitor will react to your moves? Most obviously, smart and sometimes surprising reactions will be forthcoming. So prepare and be equally smart if not smarter.
The fourth type is fearsome— “the ruthless competitor.” We say this competitor is fearsome because his or her competitive brain cells reason out this way: “My response rule is simple: It’s always better to overreact than to under-react or wait. My attack rule is just as simple: You don’t just hurt competition. You come in for the kill. Annihilate the enemy.” What can you predict about how this competitor will react to your moves? It’s obvious—be extra careful unless you have the guts and resources to go to war.
Are these competitive styles consistently practiced by their advocates? What we’ve observed it that they change over time and according to the situation. Even an indifferent or a Hamlet competitor can at times take on a ruthless competitive style because of a traumatic experience.
But in all these, what you must now keep in mind is this basic proposition: “In dealing with the issue of a competitor’s future strategy, remember that a leading competitor will usually do what he/she has gotten used to do in the past, shaped or reshaped, directed or redirected by that competitor’s current or changed competitive style.”
Keep up with emerging competitive intelligence practices and trends. For this, you may want to every so often visit the web site of The Society of Competitor Intelligence Professionals (SCIP):www.scip.org.
Send questions to MarketingRx@pldtDSL.net. God bless!
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