Competitive analysis glossary
Plain-English definitions of 37 terms used in competitor analysis, pricing and strategy.
- Aspirational competitor
- A leading business you learn from but do not compete with directly today.
- Battlecard
- A one-page brief about one competitor: where they win, where you win, pricing, objection answers and questions to ask prospects.
- Benchmark item
- A standard product or service used to compare prices fairly across businesses, such as a regular cappuccino or a standard haircut.
- Buyer power
- One of Porter's Five Forces: how much customers can push prices down or demand more.
- Competitive intelligence (CI)
- The ongoing collection and analysis of information about competitors and the market to support decisions.
- Competitive set
- The group of businesses a customer realistically compares for the same need; common in hotels and retail.
- CR4
- Four-firm concentration ratio: the combined market share of the four largest businesses.
- Differentiator
- A feature or quality you offer that few competitors do and customers value.
- Direct competitor
- A business selling the same kind of offer to the same customers in the same market.
- Entry price
- A business's lowest price on the chosen basis, such as its cheapest paid plan per month.
- Feature matrix
- A table of features against competitors showing who offers what.
- Five Forces
- Michael Porter's framework: rivalry, new entrants, substitutes, buyer power and supplier power.
- HHI
- Herfindahl-Hirschman Index: the sum of squared market shares in percent, from near 0 (fragmented) to 10,000 (monopoly).
- ICE score
- A prioritisation method multiplying Impact, Confidence and Ease, each scored 1-10.
- Indirect competitor
- A business meeting the same customer need with a different offer.
- Keyword gap
- Search terms competitors target or rank for that you do not.
- Landmine question
- A neutral question you suggest prospects ask, which reveals a competitor's weakness without criticising them.
- Momentum
- Signals that a competitor is growing or shrinking: openings, hiring, funding, ad activity, review velocity.
- Perceptual map
- A two-axis chart placing businesses on dimensions customers care about, used to find positioning space.
- Positioning
- The place a business occupies in customers' minds relative to competitors.
- Price index
- A business's price divided by the market median price, times 100.
- Price per unit
- Price normalised to a standard quantity (per 100 ml, per kg, per seat) to compare different pack sizes or plans.
- Review mining
- Systematic analysis of customer reviews to find what customers praise and complain about.
- Review velocity
- How many new reviews a business receives in a period, often the last 90 days.
- Substitute
- A different way customers can meet the same need, including doing it themselves.
- Supplier power
- One of Porter's Five Forces: how much suppliers can raise your costs or limit supply.
- SWOT
- Strengths, Weaknesses (internal), Opportunities and Threats (external).
- Table stakes
- Features or standards most competitors offer and customers expect by default.
- Threat of new entrants
- One of Porter's Five Forces: how easily new competitors can enter the market.
- Threat score
- FindRivals's 0-100 estimate of how much a competitor can hurt you, combining strength, overlap, momentum and reach.
- TOWS matrix
- A method pairing SWOT quadrants to generate strategies: SO, ST, WO and WT.
- Value metric
- The unit a price scales with, such as per user, per location or per order.
- Weighted score
- A 0-100 score combining criterion scores according to how much each criterion matters.
- White space
- An important customer need, or a positioning combination, that no competitor currently serves.
Put these into practice in the workspace or read the complete competitor analysis guide.