What About Your Competitors?

We live in an era where customers can instantly find many alternative products and services to meet the same need. Sometimes your copetition can even be your otherwise potential customers. For example, for businesses that sell fast oil changes for cars, one competitor is the do-ityourself oil changer. Sometimes your competition can come from completely different business categories or technologies. To clean my house, do I buy your vacuum cleaner, or do I hire a housekeeper, or do I invest in materials with easy-to-clean surfaces? To get in touch with my friend overseas, do I mail a letter, send an e-mail, call on a cell phone, fax a document, connect face to face via computer, or fly over and meet face to face?

In general, consumers tend to choose from among a small set of products or services and similar brands or suppliers to meet their needs. This is called the considered set. It is very telling which of your competitors your customers lump you in with. You may be very surprised at both how customers categorize their choices and who or what your competitors really are. Needless to say, knowing this can have a large effect on your marketing communications.