A competitive analysis is a report that compares different products, companies, business strategies, markets, advertising campaigns, or other designs with the goal of gaining a competitive advantage or improving a business, process, or product. Competitive analyses are also conducted when creating a certain kind of product or document for the first time, so that you can understand how others are creating that product or document.
A competitive analysis compares things that are somewhat similar (an "apples to apples" rather than "apples to oranges" comparison) so that the small differences stand out and can be adjusted for improvement.
A competitive analysis is often called a benchmarking report or a benchmarking analysis. When looking for examples, be sure you search for both competitive analysis and benchmarking.
Competitive analyses can be evaluation reports that simply report what the writer finds out about different competitions businesses, processes, strategies, products, or markets. Many times, however, a competitive analysis also includes recommendations based on the research findings.
For the purposes of this class, you will be creating a competitive analysis that includes both an evaluative report of your research as well as some recommendations that make the document actionable and useful.
This is the first full, written assignment you will turn into me, so it is normal to feel some trepidation. Remember that if the document does not fully meet the requirements, you will be given the opportunity to revise, provided you have completed the assignment in the spirit of the genre and in good faith (you actually tried to complete the assignment). Please review the grading contract or ask me if you need support for this first assignment.
We start with this genre because it is a chance for you to explore ideas you may use in unit 2. All of the reports in unit 2 usually include some kind of competitive analysis, so this document may help you complete your group report in unit 2.
This assignment is also important because you should be looking up examples of every assignment you are asked to do in any class—basically, conducting an informal competitive analysis of the different types of reports, layouts, and content you should use for each assignment. In the professional world, most people are given tasks they are unfamiliar with. When that happens to you, you will need to look for examples of how to complete the task. You may look to your coworkers or in your company shared drive, or you may look for examples beyond your company so that you can do the task in a new way. Similarly, in this class, there are example competitive analyses on the Assignments page, but those examples do not entirely meet the requirements for our specific project. You may have to look online for other examples.
First, you will need to do some imagining. Decide which one of the following things you want to do. Whatever you choose will be your context for the report. Options include:
Keep in mind that whatever you select here will shape not only this assignment, but also the elevator pitch you will give to the class. You will be pitching your idea, so start thinking about it early.