Steps to Identify the Indirect Competitors of your Business.

[Etini]

Indirect competitors are part of the competitive landscape of a business. But how do you identify this direct competitors?

1) Understand the core utility that your business is offering: Identifying your indirect competitors starts with a clear understanding of the vital value your business offers to your target audience.

2) Understand the alternatives to the utility that you offer: This involves the business person examining if the customers have another way of fulfilling this utility without patronizing your kind of products. These could come in the form of other products or services.

Why Should You Know Your Indirect Competitors?

Understanding your indirect competitors helps you to tailor your marketing approach to deliver the balanced message to your target audience.

 

[btaliat]

A good business owner should be a good observer. And this should make him recognise his potential enemies or competitors in the market arena. There are some steps he needs to take to let him realise and identify its potential competitors.

The first is to know through the prices those competitors are selling their goods. If they sell a quite lower than his own or the general market price to attract customers, then he should know they are his competitors.

 

[Augusta]

Yes competition always stems from the sellers of your alternatives to the utility that you offer: Though it might not be a direct one but indirectly they would be competing with you.

So to know your competitors you look at your business in a bid to examining if the customers have another way of fulfilling this utility if they do know that you have a competition from that business also.

So you look for a way to overcome them and take a bigger market share

 

[Fidelia1]

Any product or service that provides a direct alternative to the products or services you offer is your competition and whether you agree or not, their activities would affect the way your business is working. You have to include them in your competitors analysis and research. You would need to study that particular market too and how that market would affect your business. You might not have a direct role in changing things in that market but a good knowledge of the alternative for your products can help you tailor your response and strategies.

 

[King bell]

To know the competitive landscape, it’s important to recognize other indirect competitors. Some steps to do this include understanding the industry itself, finding direct competitors, defining the target market segment(s), analyzing substitute products/services and looking into complementary ones as well; such an analysis allows companies identify possible threats or opportunities that may arise in relation to them. For instance, a book store could view digital reading platforms such as Kindle Fire tablets and Nook e-readers among others not just only their direct competitor but also indirect ones thus underlining need for extensive market investigation coupled with knowledge about what is happening around them in terms of business trends etc.