10. Example: Competitive Research

Understanding Your Competitors and Market

New Terms:

Going down the rabbit hole: A reference to the long and chaotic journey of Alice in the book Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. In this context it means spending too much time following research threads that are increasingly distant from the topic you are trying to understand.

Things to Remember About Competitive Research

• **Who are your competitors? **: Make sure you create a comprehensive list of competitors for your product. It is especially important if you are entering a new market.
  
  
• Estimate your competitor's market share: Start by researching the target audience for the competitor. Research as much as you can and read multiple articles. You will probably need to extrapolate the available data to calculate the competitor's market share.
  
  
• Don't be discouraged by strong competitors Just because there are strong competitors, it doesn’t mean that there is no room for one more, especially if you have better product.
  
  
• Do your research and move on: Do not go down the rabbit hole and spend too much time doing research. You have a product to launch!

Sources used in our TAM calculation:

It is always important to cite any data you use!

• Quartz: The US is now buying more stretchy pants than blue jeans

• A Growth Strategy for Lululemon 2018

• [US Population by Gender](
  https://www.statista.com/statistics/737923/us-population-by-gender)

• [CSI Market: LULU's Competition by Segment and its Market Share](
  https://csimarket.com/stocks/competitionSEG2.php?code=LULU)

• [90 degrees by Reflex](
  https://www.90degreebyreflex.com/pages/about-us)

If you search a bit more about Lululemon, you can run into this very interesting data:

• [Lululemon’s website stats](
  https://www.similarweb.com/website/lululemon.com#search)