British Council-Understanding Competitors

Transcript of the podcast

Allan: So, the first thing, then, as you know, is that we’ve seen our market share slowly declining over the last few years. The figures aren’t disastrous, so I don’t think there’s any need to panic, but we do need to think carefully about why this is happening, and do what we can to reverse the trend as soon as possible

Brown: Hmmm…looking at these figures I see what you mean. So the first thing to do is look at the overall context

?Allan: Have you drawn up a PEST analysis

Brown: Yes – here it is…as you can see, we feel the political situation to be fairly stable at the moment in this country, though the international climate is, obviously something different

!Allan: …and there’s not much we can do about that

Brown: No, and the problem is here…where it starts to effect the economy. There are no real signs that this is happening yet, but people may perceive that an economic downturn is coming

…Allan: Which leads to the social factors

Brown: Yes, families are spending less. However, most of our customers, and our target market, are young single people, not families

.Allan: So, next we should do a SWOT

Brown: Sure, our strengths are still the level of recognition of our brand, which is increasing. We were moving from a niche market into a mass one, but now that process seems to have stopped

?Allan: A weakness

…Brown: Perhaps we aren’t properly prepared for such a move

…Allan: We are up against some major competitors – Nike, Adidas

.Brown: Yes, that’s obviously, the biggest threat here

?Allan: Can we compete with these names

?Brown: Do you think they are worried about us

?Allan: …and how can we find out

…Brown: Well, there are several ways…we could use some industrial espionage

!!!…Allan: You mean spying on them!? I hope you’re joking

Brown: Mmmm, yessss…Well, I suggest the best thing to do is to commission some market research. We can never really know what our competitors are doing, but if we understand the market better, at least we can make informed decisions about them

Answers

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