THE BIG PICTURE

We’ve talked about a lot of essential elements to a successful business: making and selling great products, managing money well, and putting together a strong team with talented leaders. If a business does all of these things well, will it be successful? Maybe. There’s another variable we’ve hinted at throughout this process, and it matters as much as anything to a business’s success: competition.One way to think about competition is that it’s what happens when more than one business is trying to sell similar products to the same customer. Nike and Adidas are competitors because they both sell running shoes. So are Apple and Microsoft because they both sell computing devices and software. And so are McDonald’s and Burger King because they both sell burgers. “But wait,” you might say. “I am a loyal Burger King fan, and I will never eat at McDonald’s.” That doesn’t mean that Burger King doesn’t compete with McDonald’s. It just means that Burger King has done a great job of winning your business as a customer. That’s what competition is all about!

QUICK QUESTION:

Think of a product or service sold by your company. Are there other businesses that offer similar products or services? Why do your customers choose you and not your competitors? When there is more than one business competing for the same customer’s attention, every business has to work harder and smarter to attract that customer. So a successful business is not only one that sells great products well—it sells better products, better than the competition.Let’s take a look at the Most Important Things that we’ll be focusing on this week

• Competition drives businesses to make better products and serve their customers better.
• There are several types of competition. We’ll talk about competition through innovation and competition from new entrants.
• Businesses use a SWOT analysis to take a look at their competitors. It has four parts: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
• Competition is also relevant on a personal level, and you can work on your competitiveness with a professional self-improvement plan.

Why Is This Important?

As the quotation above suggests, competition makes every business better. When a business must compete for customers’ money, it has a huge incentive to outperform other businesses. Without competition, a business can get complacent—it loses its drive to make and sell great products. That hurts customers, because they are less happy with inferior products. It also hurts the business, because unhappy customers are less loyal and more likely to seek a replacement or just do without. So although competition sometimes gets a bad rap, it’s actually great for businesses and customers.

How Does This Connect to the Other Parts of Business?

Competition affects every part of the business. Product development must be aware of what the competition is doing so that it can make sure it creates a great offering for customers. Operations must keep things running smoothly to provide products that are high quality and on time so that customers find the business reliable. Marketing and sales must connect with customers to get the message out that the business makes the best product on the market for the customer. And all of this comes down to each individual employee making day-to-day decisions that benefit the business and the customer. So every employee in every department of a business is impacted by competition.Now, let’s get started with an Explore Activity to give you an opportunity to jump right into this week’s materials.

Explore Activity

HOT TOPIC

Week 10

PART 1

Find a recent article or video describing the competition between two or more businesses. Post a link to the article or video in the discussion thread and answer the following questions:
1. What are the competing businesses and what products do they sell?2. Which company do you believe is winning the competition? Why?

PART 2