Competitor Analysis Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Competitor Analysis - Assignment Example Well, one must keep in mind that the competitor is also there to tap the market for making profit and growing his business. Also, from the buyer's/ consumer's point of view, competition can be defined as the best bargain offer grabbed by the customer. Perfect Competition: This is an extreme case and is more of a concept in which each competitor offers or seeks exactly a similar thing, as do the others. There's nothing to differentiate one from the other and depending upon price one can be substituted with the other. From the strategic planning point of view, competitor analysis is very important for any company's long-term survival. There was a time couple of decades ago when the management of one company used to make it sure that there be no mention of its rival during discussions as it would give unnecessary mileage to its rival. No more. Now the trend has reversed and companies do much more research in understanding the rival and take pride in listing the advantages that their product has over the rival's. Competitor analysis has several important roles in strategic planning; Frederick the Great said, "It is pardonable to be defeated, but never to be surprised."1 This effectively meant - go to war fully prepared i.e. know the competitor well. Therefore, by knowing our Competitors we may be able to predict their next moves, exploit their weaknesses and respond to their strengths. We have selected TESCO as the company for our analysis because Tesco is UK's largest retailer, having around 1800 stores in UK alone and more than 2300 stores worldwide, with group sales crossing m 37,070 worldwide at the end of financial year 2005. An international retailer of food, non-food and retailing services, Tesco currently operates in the China, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Japan, Malaysia, Poland, Republic of Ireland, Slovakia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and the UK. Recent figures from market research group TNS showed the group had boosted its share of the UK grocery market by 1.5% to 30.5%. One in every 8 is now spent in this supermarket giant, and it's rising. Asda was second, with a 16.7% market share and Sainsbury's third with 16.2%. The group is on a progressive path and some more announcements are due in the coming months with Next Annual Report Due in May - 2006 and Next AGM on July 7th. Tesco is securing itself a position in the top echelon of an elite group of international retail organizations identified by Professor Neil Wrigley of