In recent times, with the development of technology, new businesses are emerging all over the world. Simultaneously, business competitors are also emerging at a rapid rate in all fields. Hence, to stand unique in the industry, every company involved in a business must have a unique selling point. But, introducing fresh ideas in a business is not as easy as it sounds. To make that possible, every business organization must have control over their rival’s business performance and do a competitive analysis of the market. Since competitive analysis is an essential concept that plays a vital role in the growth of a business, to help marketing students improve their knowledge of this concept, many professors often ask students to work on competitive analysis research topics.
If you are a marketing student who needs a unique research topic related to competitive analysis, then this blog is for you. Here, for your convenience, we have recommended 100 interesting research ideas on competitive analysis. In addition to that, we have also explained what competitive analysis is and the effective ways to perform it. Continue reading to know more details.
What is Competitive Analysis?
A competitive analysis is an essential part of your company’s business plan. You can conduct competitive analysis research on various topics to examine your competitors and compare their business strategies to those of your own. Competitive analysis includes finding out your competition and examining their strengths and weaknesses to that of your organization. The primary objective of your competitive analysis research is to help owners of business organizations verify the probable opportunities and barriers in the industry and monitor their competitors’ business, sales, and distribution management tactics.
If you are looking for some good competitive analysis research topics learning about the concept of a competitive analysis is not enough, you must also know the methods to perform it.
Know How to Perform Competitive Analysis
The steps for conducting a competitive analysis depend on how you want to perform the examination. Typically, you can conduct competitive analysis offline or through the company website.
To perform competitive analysis offline, take the following steps:
- Determine your customers
- Search your competitor’s company information
- Record the products and services offered by your competitor’s company
- Collect your competitor’s market information
- Conduct SWOT analysis
- Evaluate and find your competitive advantage
Now, you can also perform the competitive analysis through your competitor’s website and get details on their SEO strategies, marketing plan, and success values. To do the same, you must take the following steps:
- Search for your competitors
- Find out the position of your company in the industry it serves
- Analyze your competitor’s official website
- Evaluate your company’s website traffic and performance
- Compare the keywords, effectiveness of SEO, and backlinks of your competitor.
Perks Of Conducting Competitive Analysis
If you know the steps to conduct a competitive analysis, you can easily understand how the benefits are achieved. Hence, it becomes easy to know how the business grows. Some common benefits of competitive analysis are discussed as follows:
1. Analyzing Competitor’s Strengths
Determination of competitor’s business strengths and business strategies
2. Identifying Rival’s Opportunities
Realizing the business opportunities where you have an advantage over your competitors.
3. Exploring Market Gaps
Examining the gaps in the market that you can fill
4. Setting High Standards
Creating benchmarks to be combative with other players in the market
5. Developing Enhanced Products
Emphasize your product development by evaluating your competitor’s product development based on the features your customers value most.
6. Uncovering Market Segments
Discovering areas in the market that your competitor failed to pay attention
7. Identifying Rival’s Weakness
Realizing your competitor’s weakness based on your customer’s complaints and enhancing your product by capitalizing on it.
8. Creating New Product Categories
Launching products on new categories that your consumers need but your competitor failed to recognize.
How to Choose a Competitive Analysis Research Topic
Are you unsure how to find out a good topic for your competitive analysis research? If yes, then following these steps might help you.
- Determine the industry or field you want to specialize in by taking into account your hobbies, expertise, and company objectives.
- Conduct preliminary research to develop ideas by utilizing web resources, academic databases, or industry publications.
- Clearly describe the objective and scope of your analysis, as well as the important questions you wish to address.
- Collect basic information about your possible topics to determine the data and resource availability.
- Identify and evaluate major players in your selected area including their strengths, limitations, and market positions.
- Narrow or widen your topic depending on early study to ensure specificity and viability.
- Consult industry experts to ensure that your topic is relevant and original.
- Create a specific, measurable, and achievable question that matches your study purpose.
List of Competitive Analysis Research Topics
Are you in search of some exciting competitive analysis research topics that you can use to get high grades on your paper? Choose the one you require for the research paper from the ideas mentioned below:
Striking Competitive Analysis Research Topics on Sales
Typically, competitive analysis research on sales examines competitors’ strategies, pricing, channels, and performance to optimize sales tactics and market share. If you wish to improve the sales of your business, then perform competitive analysis research on these topics.
- What is the outlook of your competitor‘s sales process?
- Analyze the channels your competitor use to sell their products.
- Examine if your competitors are expanding or scaling down their service.
- How many outlets do your competitors have for selling their products?
- Does your rival offer partner resell programs?
- What are the yearly revenue statistics of your rival’s company?
- How many sales do your rivals make each year?
- Why do some customers prefer not to buy from your rival’s products or take their services?
- Examine competitors’ sales channels to identify effective distribution strategies.
- Research competitors’ customer acquisition costs, retention rates, and loyalty programs to develop targeted sales strategies.
Best Competitive Analysis Research Topics on Content
To develop better content marketing strategies, a competitive content analysis study looks at competitors’ content formats, engagement, channels, and quality. Listed below are a few content-related research questions you may take into consideration when exploring your competitors.
- How accurate is your rival’s content compared to yours?
- Does your competitor’s content have errors in spelling or grammar?
- How in-depth does your competitor’s content have?
- What tone do your competitors follow?
- What is the average readability score of your rival’s content?
- Are your rival’s contents free for every viewer or do the readers need to subscribe for membership?
- Who are the writers of your rival’s content?
- Is there a noticeable byline or author bio attached to your competitor’s articles?
- Research competitors’ influencer partnerships and guest blogging strategies.
- Identify gaps in competitors’ content coverage, formats, and channels to inform content creation strategies.
Amazing Competitive Analysis Research Ideas on Marketing
In general, competitive marketing analysis research focuses on competitors’ marketing plans, techniques, spending, distribution, and efficacy to find weaknesses and areas for optimization. The following are some marketing-based topics you may take into consideration when performing competitive analysis research.
- Do your rivals have a blog?
- Are your competitors developing e-books or whitepapers?
- Do your rivals have a podcast?
- Have you observed your competitors post videos or conduct webinars?
- Do your competitors issue press releases?
- Analyze if your competitors use static visual content like infographics and cartoons.
- What type of media kit do your competitors use?
- Do your competitors publish buying guides and data sheets?
- Do your competitors have a FAQs section?
- Are there any quality articles on your competitor’s website?
- Do your competitors have case studies published on their websites?
- Do your competitors issue buying guides and data sheets?
- What online and offline advertising campaigns do your competitors run?
- Analyze the quantity of blog posts, white papers, and e-books published by your competitors.
- Examine the regularity of your competitor’s content assets. How often do they put out new e-books or case studies? Do your competitors bring out anything new each week or once a fortnight?
- Analyze competitors’ brand identities, value propositions, and messaging to differentiate your marketing strategy.
- Research competitors’ marketing budget distribution and ROI metrics.
Competitive Analysis Research Questions on Business and Products
To help with strategic decision-making, a competitive business and product analysis study looks at competitors’ features, products, prices, positioning, and market share. When performing competitive analysis research on businesses and products, you may select any of the topics listed below.
- Are your rivals a high-cost or low-cost supplier?
- What is your competitor’s market share?
- What are the features and requirements of your competitor’s ideal customers?
- Do your competitors work on individual purchases or volume sets?
- How do your competitors hand out their products or services?
- Do your competitors use varied pricing strategies for online purchases?
- How does your organization distinguish itself from its rivals?
- Examine competitors’ business models, revenue streams, and profit margins to identify opportunities for innovation.
- Analyze competitors’ product offerings, features, pricing, and packaging.
Read more: Exclusive Climate Change Research Topics
Exemplary Competitive Analysis Research Topics on Social Media
Particularly, to improve social media strategy, competitive social media analysis research examines competitors’ online presence, interaction, content, influencers, and metrics. Here, we have listed some captivating competitive analysis research ideas about social media for you to deal with.
- Examine all the social media platforms on which your rivals have an account.
- Check your competitor’s count of fans/supporters.
- What kind of content do your competitors post?
- What is your rivals’ content posting consistency?
- How many users comment on your rival’s posts?
- How many people share, and retweet your rival’s post?
- Are your rivals more concerned with motivating people to go to landing pages?
- Do your rivals post more illustration content to encourage reader engagement and brand awareness?
- How much of your rival’s content is original?
- Do your rivals share collected content from other websites?
- What is the general tone of the content posted by your rivals?
- Analyze competitors’ social media ad spend, targeting strategies, and ROI metrics.
- Evaluate competitors’ social media customer service response times, resolution rates, and sentiment analysis
Competitive Analysis Research Ideas on SWOT
Mostly, competitive SWOT analysis research aims to identify the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of competitors to inform strategic planning and competitive advantage. Some SWOT-based competitive analysis research topics you may consider for your assignment are listed here.
- What are the primary strengths of your rivals?
- What is the weakest point for your rival?
- What are the areas in which your competitors excel over your brand?
- In which areas does your brand excel over your competitor?
- What do your competitors offer better than you’re your organization?
- In what areas would you consider your competitor as a threat?
- What market areas have your competitors identified that your organization could not?
Read more: Business Research Topics to Impress Your Professors
Unique Competitive Analysis Research Questions
In this section, we have recommended some distinct competitive analysis research topics for you to get started. By examining unfamiliar or unique study topics on competitive analysis, you can fill knowledge gaps, identify innovative strategies to build the business, and set your work apart.
- Administrative structure in metropolitan areas: domination, antagonism, and the impacts.
- Bertrand’s opposition beneath supple aptitude restrictions.
- Competition, invention, and expansion through restricted enforcement:
- Common data on the principles and laws of competition in Germany
- Rivalry, Patent security, advanced banking financial stability, and struggle in a local market structure
- Fiscal competition and skepticism In Europe
- Approach toward foreign goods and the war of worldwide value
- Rivalry and the changing economic landscape in Japan and the US
- Rivalry among computer operating systems, airfield privatization, and worldwide competition.
- Competition among banks, hazards, and asset allotment
- Competition for forecast and study of the Santa Fe Time Series
Fascinating Competitive Analysis Research Topics
Here, we have recommended a collection of fascinating competitive analysis research topics for you to work on. From the collection, choose any topic that matches your interest and then conduct an in-depth competitive analysis study.
- Prepare Netflix Competitive Analysis.
- Conduct a competitive analysis of the financial status of Sony in the industry.
- Write a competitive analysis essay on a rapidly changing business.
- Prepare Google’s Competitive Analysis.
- Competitive Analysis of Dominos.
- Prepare Samsung Competitive Analysis.
- Competitive Analysis of Pepsi.
- Write about the rivalry in the video game industry.
- Analyze the competitive pricing strategy of Cadbury.
- Analyze Walmart’s competitive strategies.
- Prepare a Competitive Analysis report of Hyundai.
- Discuss the competitive strategies of Nestle.
- Conduct a competitive analysis of Apple.
Top Competitive Analysis Research Questions
Are you searching for the top competitive analysis research questions? Get help from the list uploaded here. In the list, we have included some valuable research questions, topics, and ideas that will be useful for you in conducting competitive analysis research and pushing your business to the top level.
- How do competitors’ sales teams structure their operations, and what are their performance metrics?
- What types of content drive engagement for competitors on social media?
- Who are competitors’ target customer segments, and what are their pain points?
- What are the key differentiators among competitors’ products or services?
- How do competitors engage with their customers, and what are their customer retention strategies?
- What is competitors’ digital transformation strategy, and how do they leverage technology?
- How do competitors allocate resources, and what are their operational efficiencies?
- What are competitors’ long-term strategic goals, and how do they plan to achieve them?
- How do competitors utilize data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) in their operations?
- How do competitors respond to industry disruptions and emerging trends?
The Bottom Line
Making well-informed decisions supported by thorough research is essential to staying ahead of the competition in the fast-paced business world of today. Moreover, if you wish to enter a new market, streamline processes, or develop new goods, then you must perform in-depth competition analysis research to promote growth, innovation, and success. In this blog, especially to help businesses, marketers, and researchers gain a competitive edge, we have suggested diverse competitive analysis research topics and questions to focus on. From the collection, select an appropriate topic, research, and discover the keys to surpassing your rivals. By examining competitive analysis research topics, you can get important insights, spot gaps in the market, and create plans to overtake your rivals. If you are still confused about what topic to select or how to perform competition analysis research, get immediate assistance from the marketing experts on our team and wrap up your task.