Znaczenie analizy konkurencji w marketingu

Każda firma powinna na bieżąco przeprowadzać analizę konkurencji w zakresie marketingu.  Co to jest? I dlaczego jest to ważne? Jest kilka powodów.

• Dowiedz się, kto sprzedaje ten sam typ (zastępczych) produktów lub usług co Ty.
• Dowiedz się, kto sprzedaje tym samym typom klientów, co Twoja firma
• See if your competitors are developing new products or exploring new markets that compete with yours.
• Identify new or emerging companies that may enter your market and begin to compete with you.
• Determine the market share and relative position of key players

How to Conduct Competitive Analysis in B2B Industrial Markets

Competitive analysis in B2B industrial markets rewards depth over breadth. The buyers are few, the switching costs are high, and the intelligence sits inside engineering reviews, supplier qualification audits, and procurement scorecards rather than public filings.

Knowing how to conduct competitive analysis at this level means going beyond product comparison sheets. It means decoding bill of materials economics, installed base behavior, and the contractual mechanics that lock revenue in place for a decade. The firms that do this well grow share in mature categories where consensus says growth is impossible.

Reframing How to Conduct Competitive Analysis Around Decision Architecture

Industrial purchasing decisions follow a predictable architecture: specification, qualification, commercial negotiation, and aftermarket lock-in. Each stage has different decision-makers, different evaluation criteria, and different competitive vulnerabilities.

The conventional approach studies competitors as companies. The better approach studies them as participants inside specific decision stages. A competitor dominant at specification (think Caterpillar in heavy equipment dealer networks, or Siemens in factory automation reference designs) is vulnerable in commercial negotiation when a qualified second source enters. A competitor strong on aftermarket revenue (Rolls-Royce TotalCare, Atlas Copco service contracts) is vulnerable when a customer’s CFO challenges total cost of ownership assumptions during budget cycles.

Mapping competitors against decision architecture identifies where displacement is achievable and where it is not. This is the work that separates useful competitive analysis from the deck that gets filed.

Sourcing Intelligence Procurement Teams Will Not Volunteer

Public sources reveal what competitors say. Private sources reveal what customers do. The gap between the two is where pricing power lives.

SIS International Research has found, across competitive intelligence engagements in industrial automation, refrigeration, and heavy machinery, that procurement teams disclose roughly 60 percent of what they know about competitor pricing and performance during structured B2B expert interviews, but only 15 to 20 percent during vendor-led conversations. The difference is the interviewer’s independence. A neutral third party hears about delivery slippage, warranty disputes, and the specific clauses competitors concede during contract renewal.

Win/loss analysis tells the same story from the sales side. Deals lost on price are usually lost on something else: a missing certification, a weak field service footprint, or a procurement officer who already trusts the incumbent. Naming the real reason changes the response.

The Four Layers of Industrial Competitive Analysis

Effective competitive analysis in B2B industrial markets operates on four layers simultaneously. Each layer answers a question the others cannot.

Source: SIS International Research

Most competitive decks cover layer one and stop. The decisions that matter (where to price, where to invest, where to walk away) require all four.

Reading the Aftermarket Signal

In industrial categories, aftermarket revenue is the truth-teller. New equipment sales follow capex cycles and can be distorted by financing terms or channel stuffing. Aftermarket revenue, parts, service, consumables, software updates, reflects whether customers actually use what they bought and whether they trust the vendor enough to pay margin on it.

A competitor with rising new-equipment share but flat aftermarket attachment is buying revenue. A competitor with shrinking new-equipment share but rising aftermarket margin is consolidating its installed base for a price increase. Honeywell, Emerson, and Schneider Electric all manage their process automation businesses against this distinction. The competitive read changes accordingly.

Across SIS International’s competitive intelligence work in industrial equipment, aftermarket revenue per installed unit has proven a more reliable predictor of competitor pricing power over the next 18 months than any leading indicator drawn from public financials.

The SIS Four-Lens Competitive Framework

The framework below organizes the work. It is the structure used in industrial competitive intelligence engagements where the deliverable has to survive review by a Fortune 500 strategy committee.

Source: SIS International Research

The framework forces a separation between what a competitor is and what a competitor is becoming. Boards reward the second analysis.

Where Competitive Analysis Translates Into Action

Three uses justify the cost of doing this work properly.

Pricing architecture. Competitive analysis sets the ceiling and floor for list price, discount discipline, and contract terms. Without it, sales teams negotiate against rumor.

Reshoring and supply decisions. Reshoring feasibility studies depend on accurate reads of competitor manufacturing footprint, supplier qualification timelines, and tariff exposure. The companies moving production back to North America and Mexico are doing so on the back of competitive intelligence about where rivals cannot follow quickly.

M&A pipeline. Targets identified through systematic competitive analysis (a competitor’s distressed division, an underinvested aftermarket business, a regional player with a certification a global buyer needs) close at better multiples than targets surfaced by bankers.

The discipline of how to conduct competitive analysis well is not academic. It funds capex decisions, defends pricing, and shapes the M&A pipeline that compounds shareholder return over a decade.

What Separates Strong Programs From Weak Ones

Strong industrial competitive intelligence programs share four traits. They run continuously rather than as one-off projects. They blend primary expert interviews with structured secondary analysis. They name the decision the intelligence will inform before the work starts. And they are read by operators, not filed by analysts.

Programs that meet these conditions change pricing, change product roadmaps, and change M&A targets. Programs that miss them produce decks. The difference is visible in the budget allocation a year later.

For VP-level decision makers asking how to conduct competitive analysis that holds up under board scrutiny, the answer is structural: build the four-layer view, source from independent primary research, and tie every finding to a decision already on the leadership calendar.

O firmie SIS International

SIS Międzynarodowy oferuje badania ilościowe, jakościowe i strategiczne. Dostarczamy dane, narzędzia, strategie, raporty i spostrzeżenia do podejmowania decyzji. Prowadzimy również wywiady, ankiety, grupy fokusowe i inne metody i podejścia do badań rynku. Skontaktuj się z nami dla Twojego kolejnego projektu badania rynku.