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Today, excessive competition is one of the main problems that faces any company.

The constantly increasing competition for all companies, even companies that started operations with little competition, soon threatened by the emergence of new competitors (especially if the first companies to begin to succeed) that will make every effort to snatch a share of its market.

Competition is increasing, and if companies do not take the necessary steps to address it, is likely to be overtaken by it, and even lose much of its market.

Here below the main ways to address legitimate competition:

Analyze competition

One way to cope is to analyze the competition, which means knowing it well, collect and analyze this important information, be aware of what you do, try to anticipate their actions, etc.

For that, we buy their products, make use of its services, visit their premises, analyze their strategies, interviewing his former employees, interviewing clients, etc.

The competitive analysis will allow us to make decisions and design strategies that allow us to compete properly with it, for example, if in our competitive analysis we discovered that one of its weaknesses are its high costs and therefore its inability to keep prices low, we can choose to reduce our prices.

Reduce prices

A common way to cope with the competition is lowering prices below the price of it.

This practice can be a good way to compete, however, we must be careful as it involves reducing our profit margin and it is also likely that competition also decide to reduce their prices.

Before using this practice, we must ensure that we are able to reduce our costs without sacrificing the quality of our products, and that the price reduction is a strategy that competition can hardly be imitated.

Still, before reducing our prices to meet competition, it is preferable to use other practices or strategies, such as the search for differentiation, innovation, or improving customer service.

Differentiate from competitors

Another way to deal with competition through differentiation,  by offering a product or service that has different characteristics that make other products or services from the competition.

But to compete not enough to offer something different, but must also be unique, novel, innovative, something that is difficult to copy by competitors, something that allows us to distinguish ourselves from it, and is the reason why consumers choose us to us before her.

For example, we differentiate ourselves in the design of our products, customer care, in providing extra services, the speed of our attention, to offer a personalized service, etc. Read the rest of this entry »

Within the field of marketing, marketing and sales promotion, merchandising, understood as a set of promotions at the point of sale, is gaining more importance, because all competing products within shopping centers to attract attention and thus facilitate the purchase of certain products.

Merchandising Elements

There are different elements that can be used at the point of sale to highlight and promote a particular product within the various merchandising strategies:

- The use of posters. These posters can be used to report the existence of a product offer and promotion.
- The status of the product. Locate product to eye level, in an area or near an obligatory step in the boxes, may have resulted in increased sales of that product, so it is perfectly studied, and not by chance. By contrast, placing a product in a secondary result in a decrease in sales.
- The movement and light. A product placed on a turntable and adequate lighting can dramatically increase your sales to be high on the other products in the store or outlet.
- The decoration. At certain times such as Christmas, or Sale, decoration attempts a pull factor to increase the level of sales.
- Demonstrations and tastings. These practices allow publicizing a product, thus allowing a better understanding of it, and, therefore, increased sales, not as an unknown.

The Product Presentation
The brand and product presentation are essential for a product to compete with the rest of products at the point of sale. Thus, the concept of brand as well as the added value of the desired product being of a particular brand is essential.

However, the positioning the product at point of sale properly is fundamental because what good is an advertising campaign if the customer then has trouble finding the product you want to buy?

Advertising Campaigns
Another classic in the merchandising element is the fact of moving to the dealer’s own external elements of an advertising campaign (posters, slogans, corporate colors) to easily identify the product main character of the campaign. This helps to create the brand concept and supports both the product for sale as distributor of the product.