Question

The role of any marketing strategy is to enhance an organization’s competitive effectiveness. In order to compete effectively, the organization must have a product or service offering that is distinct; something that gives an organization a clear competitive advantage. List and briefly describe three components in which a financial service provider could use to distinguish it from other competitors.

Answer 1

Competitive analysis is an essential componenet of corporate strategy. This helps in assessing the stength and weekness of its competitors. It is an essential tactic for finding out what thier competitors are going to do and what kind of threat they present to the success of the company.

There are many components in competitive analysis. Some key components are.

1. Objectives - knowledge on competitors objective helps in prediction of the competitor's reaction against different competitors moves. Competitor objective may be finance or other types. Some aspects of to identify the competitor objective is risk tolerance, management initiative, legal restrictions, Corporate goal, etc.
2. Strategy - To identify how the company is currently operating. What are its goals, the ways and itiatives taken to achieve the goals etc.     
3. SWOT analysis - this helps in identifying the strength, weekness, opportunites and threats of its competitor. Marketing agencies often performs marketing SWOT analysis as a part of competitive analysis. They may compare the strength and weekness across competitors for various marketing channels such as webstite, blogs, social media, ads, etc.