All businesses 1. _ _, so it is essential for any business to 2. _ its competition and be ready to re/act appropriately. You should know who your 3. _ are and what they are offering. This can be learned from their promotional materials, websites, exhibitions and trade fairs, and by talking to the customers and suppliers. You should also take interest in the type of products or services your competitors provide, in the way they market them and how they deliver them, the prices they charge, the ways they win customer loyalty, what caliber of staff they attract, whether they innovate, how much publicity they are getting and where, etc. Also, talk to them. Phone and face-to-face contacts at social and business events will give you an idea of your competitor’s style and quality. The information obtained in this way should help you set realistic aims for yourself and decide what direction to take, what goods or services to improve or develop, how to set your prices 4. ___ and how to create a winning marketing strategy. And you should not stop at just checking what is already there – you must be constantly on the lookout for possible new competition.
Businesses compete through performance, head-to-head and predatory types of competition. Most businesses will try to 5. _ their competitors. Knowing what the opponent is doing, they will simply try to offer better products and services. However, there are companies which not only try to perform better than the competitor, but take steps to prevent the 6. _ from doing well and making sales. They can criticize the other company in their advertisements, locate their store right next to the opponent’s or control the supply of goods. Finally, one company may want to control or monopolize the market and therefore purchase smaller companies or do everything it can to drive them out of business.
