08. Understanding Your Competition

Understanding Your Competition's Market Share

Things to Remember About Researching the Competition

• Competitors market share: it is important to know what your competitors are doing and how well your competition is performing
• Know your TAM: see the next page for a review of how to calculate TAM from the Product Strategy course.
  
  
• Research is your best friend: You can do a lot of research online using free tools and articles. Your company may also have access to premium research sources. Always check your sources to make sure you are getting accurate and reliable data.

Market Share Research Game Plan

There are a lot of ways to calculate your competitor's share. Here is one simple method:

1. Understand who your competitor sees as their target customers. For public companies, you may be able to identify the target customers from the company's published mission statement. Private companies will be trickier. Look for published research and articles online.
   
   
2. Search for market statistics . Look for both general data about the market space and specific data about the market leaders. That should give you a good view of the size of the market and the relative shares of your competitors.
   
   
3. Focus on the share smaller competitors are getting. That should give you a good sense of how much of the market share can be gained by targeting the smaller players. Taking on the biggest competitor from the get-go might be tricker.

QUESTION:

My favorite app's competitors are…

Think about your favorite app and name at least three of its competitors.