Competitive positioning from theory to practice

““If you know the enemy and know yourself, victory is certain.””.

It’s one of the most famous quotes from"The Art of War"by Sun Tzu.

In business terms, it means that the key to success is knowing your competitive positioning relative to your competitors.

To help us understand this, we turn to another great thinker: Michael Porterconsidered the father of competitive strategy. In his famous book Competitive Strategy, he identifies three basic competitive strategies:

1. Differentiation strategy    
2. Cost leadership strategy
3. Focus strategy

Each strategy depends on a combination of what Porter callsthe Market TargetEach strategy depends on a combination of what Porter calls the Market Target (the competitive territory a company chooses—i.e., its product/market mix) and the"Sought Advantage(interpreted as the company’s marketing strength relative to competitors).

You can easily explore Porter’s model with a quick Google search.

What I’ve often found, even in larger companies—not just SMEs—is that putting competitive positioning into practice across different markets can be difficult.

That’s why, at ChannelMarketing, we’ve developed a practical 5-step method to scientifically assess your company’s positioning relative to competitors in any given market:

These are the 5 steps:

1. List all local and international competitorsin that specific market
2. Define the elements of the competitive territory(e.g., different product lines or regions/provinces)
3. Identify the elements that define marketing strength (e.g., product quality, brand awareness)
4. Assign weights to these elements and rate each competitor (and your own company) on each one
5. Plot the results on a Cartesian graph to visualize the competitive positioning of all players

If you are interested in learning more about the methodology for defining your company's competitive positioning, write to me at pierantonio.gallu@channelmarketing.it.

Click here http://bit.ly/4envRnO and download the GOABROAD Blueprint canvas, a one-page tool that will guide you in applying The GOABROAD^© method to take control of your internationalization strategy!

Buy the book GOABROAD Blueprint: Strategy, tactics and tools for SME internationalisation (English Edition) on Amazon: http://bit.ly/3TqmeN9