Assignment Instructions

Competition Analysis

Please note the following:

• It will take you approximately 3 hours to complete this assignment.

• It will be wise to divide your time as:
o 30 minutes to work on interviewing each of the 4 customers, that is, a total of 2 hours.
o 30 minutes to research online on your competitors.
o 30 minutes to discuss with your teammates and finalize on the competitors, product
benefits, and what customers perceive about those benefits.
• Ask your facilitator how and when to submit your assignment.
Basic Course in Entrepreneurship

Learning Objectives:
Objectives of this assignment are to:

• Understand who your competitors are.

• Identify product benefits that are most important to the customers.
• Understand how customers perceive the benefits of what your competitors are offering so that
you can further refine your value proposition.

What do you need to do?

• Identify your competition and important product benefits.

• Conduct at least 4 customer interviews to validate important product benefits and capture how
competition is doing against those benefits.

How will you go about this assignment?

A. Follow the instructions below to fill in this section.

You have identified your Unique Value Proposition in the previous lesson. Now, you will identify and
analyze your competitors. By doing so, you will understand if your value proposition is sufficiently
different from what your competitors are offering. This will help you to further refine your Unique Value
Proposition and make sure your products and services are different from theirs.

Step 1: Identify 3 to 6 existing players who are likely to be your main competition. Be careful to correctly
identify those competitors who will be fighting for the same niche. In case you are able to identify many
more competitors, go for the ones who sell more in your niche.

Step 2: Identify important product benefits (pain relievers or gain creators). Shortlist 4 to 10 that are most
important to customers. To do this, simply merge the lists of gain creators and pain relievers you had
worked on and prioritize the joint list. List them below:

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 Assignment Instructions
Competition Analysis

Product Benefits:

Our product has so much benefits for the person who is always rushing in the morning to brush

their teeth. Also having a container to put your toothpaste makes is much more hygnienic and

economical as it saves toothpaste. Good for the environment too.

Basic Course in Entrepreneurship

B. Customer Interviews

It is recommended you interview at least 4 customers. You need to interview customers to:

1. Validate the product benefits.

2. Capture how the competitors fare against those product benefits i.e. the perceived performance
of the competitors for each of the benefits.

To do this, show them your list of product benefits and add or remove them based on what the
customers say. Ask them how the competitors fare against those product benefits. Based on what the
customers say as well as your research, you need to tabulate your findings.

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 Assignment Instructions
Competition Analysis

For example, if you want to look at the energy drinks market, this is how the table will look. Let the
product benefits column headings and the competitors as row labels.

Competitors Product Benefits

Price Taste Stimulants Branding Packaging
(INR)
Energy Drink 80 Metallic Caffeine Taurine Sports 330 ml can
1 Carbonated
Energy Drink 80 Metallic Caffeine Taurine Sports 240 ml
2 Carbonated Party
Basic Course in Entrepreneurship

Energy Drink 75 Metallic Caffeine Taurine Party 300 ml can

3 Carbonated Guarana
Energy Drink 85 Apple Taurine Natural 250 ml can
4 40 Carbonated Guarana 180 ml can
Energy Drink 20 Fruity Guarana Green 200 ml pouch
5 Natural

Use the tables below to capture your customer responses on the validation of your product benefits as
well as how they think competition is doing against those benefits.

Customer 1:

Benefit 1 Benefit 2 Benefit 3 Benefit 4 Benefit 5

Competitor 1 1,500PHP Hygienic Economical Saves time

NO COMPETITION
Competitor 2
Competitor 3
Competitor 4
Competitor 5

Customer 2:

Benefit 1 Benefit 2 Benefit 3 Benefit 4 Benefit 5

Competitor 1 1,500PHP Hygienic Economical Saves time

NO COMPETITION
Competitor 2
Competitor 3
Competitor 4
Competitor 5

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© Wadhwani Foundation For Students’ Use
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 Assignment Instructions
Competition Analysis

Customer 3:

Benefit 1 Benefit 2 Benefit 3 Benefit 4 Benefit 5

Competitor 1 1,500PHP Hygienic Economical Saves time

NO COMPETITION
Competitor 2
Competitor 3
Competitor 4
Competitor 5

Customer 4:
Basic Course in Entrepreneurship

Benefit 1 Benefit 2 Benefit 3 Benefit 4 Benefit 5

Competitor 1 1,500PHP Hygienic Economical Saves time

NO COMPETITION
Competitor 2
Competitor 3
Competitor 4
Competitor 5

C. Report
Write your observations under the following headings:
• Competitors identified
• Product benefits identified and validated by customers
• Customer perception of these benefits offered by competitors

Make a table similar to the one on energy drinks to summarize your findings.

D. Submission
You should fill it up and submit it along with your report. You can submit your assignment report, as
instructed by your facilitator, in any of the following formats: handwritten on A4 sheet/typed and
printed/soft copy. You can also download this handout from LearnWise.

How will you be evaluated?

You will receive a score out of 100 in this assignment. Please contact your facilitator for any further
questions.

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