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AWARE Help & Support
Tips & Ideas for Better Practice
 AWARE aims to help organizations become the best in their sector. As part of our mission, we offer a number of tips and ideas that should help your competitive and marketing intelligence processes. Some will be directly relevant - while some are aimed to provoke thought and comment.
Our goal is to help you think outside the box - to be creative. It is only through being creative that you will be able to differentiate yourself from your competitors in the long-term - and thereby achieve long-term competitive advantage.
The tips and ideas on these pages are different from those we include on our Frequently asked questions on CI pages. Some are based on items published in AWARE's newsletter. They include business models, concepts and thoughts that you can use when looking at your own organization and processes.
Let us have feedback on what you like, what worked, what didn't (and why). Also, let us know if you have any tips that you'd like us to publish on these pages. We'll include full attribution, and contact details for any tips or ideas published.
This month's Tips
What is a competitor?
This tip looks at a number of definitions of "competitor" and how choosing the wrong definition can impact approaches to competitive strategy and understanding. (More)
Avoid Price Wars
This tip examines the impact of a price war on company profitability, and suggests a few ways to avoid such battles. (More)
Stengths, Benefits & Features
Understanding the difference is essential for effective marketing strategies. This tip defines strengths, benefits and features and gives an example of the differences (More)
Information Categories
There are 4 types of information available to companies:
- what we know we know;
- what we know we don't know;
- what we don't know we know;
- what we don't know we don't know.
This tip examines each of these categories, and their implications for CI! (More)
Evaluating Risk
What is your viewpoint? Are you one of those who avoids risk-taking and prefers safety, or do you relish new opportunities? This tip looks at why in today's world, risk-taking in business has become a necessity for survival. (More)
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Quick Tip
Quick Tip: Entrance
Robert Smith was devastated.
As the owner of a small retail business selling various groceries he had always recognised the threat posed by major supermarket chains such as Tesco, Walmart, Carrefour and the like. Now a branch of Tesco had opened next door, and business was tailing off.
He told all his friends how worried he was - and that things couldn't possibly be worse. And then a branch of Walmart opened on the other side. Robert now told friends that he expected to be out of business within the year.
His friends were really surprised when they met him a few months later - getting out of a top-range Mercedes wearing an expensive suit and with a big smile on his face.
We thought business was so bad that you were about to go bankrupt. What happened?
Robert replied: Well that is what I thought. And then I remembered that one secret to effective marketing is to make sure that your potential customers know where to find you. So I changed the name of my company. Come and look!"
Robert's friends followed him to his shop, sandwiched between Tesco and Walmart. Over the front, the new name was posted in big neon letters ENTRANCE
How do you promote your business? Can potential customers find you? Do your marketing promotions send people away, or invite them to come and buy. You need to ensure that all your marketing promotions allow customers to enter.
(For more marketing and business humour, visit our humour pages)
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Books - Co-opertition
Recommended Book
Co-opetition : 1. a revolutionary mindset that redefines competition and cooperation; 2. the game theory strategy that's changing the game of business
Adam M Brandenburger & Barry J Nalebuff
Buy UK £ or US$
Read our review of this book
Michael Porter described this book as "the most important single contribution" in taking his original ideas on ways of achieving competitive advantage forward. The book is easy to read, inexpensive and contains numerous ideas to help reshape and challenge thought processes. The writers develop Porter's 5 forces model, and introduce a sixth force. They emphasise the strategic advantages of co-operation and look at game theory as a way of approaching business strategy.
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For more recommendations visit our book selection.
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Public training
Competitive Intelligence Training
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AWARE's Newsletter
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Pages updated: May 2008 |
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