Diagnosing Competition

Abstract

Today’s companies are starting to pay as much attention to tracking their competitors as to understanding their consumers. The growing attention to competition is reflected in today’s marketing concept, the contents of the steps of the marketing planning process and the growing number of analyses developed to diagnose competition. This paper discusses the consequences of the growing attention for competition in marketing management and marketing research. Most attention is given to the application of diagnostic methods to analyse competition using scanning data.

The author is indebted to J.R. Bult, E.W. Foekens, J. Nel and J.R. Ortt who performed a number of the analyses reported in this study.