Predicting Your Competitors Reaction

Assignment on

Predicting your

Competitors Reaction

Submitted by: Saneel Gaonkar

Enrollment no: 10BSP0260

Subject : SDM

Class 2012

Predicting your Competitors Reaction

In the Article 'Predicting Your Competitor's Reaction' by Kevin P.Coyne and John Horn have highlighted the fact of how important it is to understand competitors response to your action but still most of the times companies neglect this fact, thinking that the competitors analysis is too complicated, But the response of the companies are fairly predictable to such move as new product launches and price change ,Only three questions have to be considered

* Will the competitors react at all?

* What options will they consider?

* Which options are they ore likely to choose?

Thinking about these questions will let help the company gauge competitors reaction.

Will companies react to all?

Companies have to know that sometimes competitors do not react to strategic move. Managers including who do not bother of competitive analysis at all are schooled in stories of companies that failed by ignoring their rivals so they are afraid that is assuming no reaction they will end up being protagonist in one of those narratives. The first step in analyzing competitor's reaction is to adder the chances of no reaction. To determine this one must answer four questions

* Will your rival see your questions?

Sometimes competitors fail to recognize your actions.

* Will the competitor feel threatened?

Even if your competitor sees your actions he may not feel threatened and will not respond accordingly. According the survey only 23%of the executives learned about their competitor's new offerings early enough to respond before it hit the market

* Will mounting a response be a priority?

The adversary may already have a full agenda before the company makes a move on it are product launches, marketing campaigns, reorganizations, major acquisitions, plant openings and cost reduction effort some or all of which curtailed in order to react to your move

* Can your rival overcome organizational inertia?

Even if organization wants to react the organization a whole may resist. For a company to react it has to make major organizational changes, it is very unlikely to do so. Unless the threat is immediate and deadly. Secondly,