Competitive product analysis methodology!

When making products, success cannot be achieved simply by “focusing on users and making good products”, but rather, we must follow game theory. We must know that good products may also be defeated by competitors. Just like group buying and shared bicycles, most products will face fierce market competition, and face problems such as market share being eroded by competitors, user loss, and reduced revenue.

Therefore, when making products, we should not only pay attention to users, but also to competitors, and improve the competitiveness of products by conducting effective competitive analysis .

For products, first of all, competitive product analysis is a basic skill for product managers. If you are not a product manager now and want to switch careers to become a product manager, doing more competitive product analysis can also help you develop a sense of product.

Secondly, competitive product analysis is the first work task many new employees receive when they join a company. Through competitive product analysis, you can quickly understand the industry, market, competitors' products, and your own products so that you can integrate into your work more quickly.

When I first started working as a product manager, there were almost no articles online that provided guidance on how to conduct a competitive product analysis. It was even harder to find a clearly structured and complete competitive product analysis framework like the one below.

Even with the competitive product analysis framework, competitive product analysis is not as simple as imagined. During the analysis process, product managers are prone to various misunderstandings without knowing it:

1. The purpose is unclear, the content is broad and comprehensive, lacks depth or breadth, and is superficial;

2. It is just a simple collection and listing of information, but no valuable conclusions are drawn and it lacks operability.

3. Find data randomly, the data is not authoritative, and the source is unreliable

5. Simply copying and imitating the functions and designs of competitors, falling into low-level competition

6. Due to the lack of methodological guidance, different people use different methods and draw different conclusions when doing competitive product analysis.

So how do you do competitive product analysis? This article mainly discusses how to do an excellent competitive product analysis from the following 5 aspects:

First, what are competing products and how to choose the right ones

Second, what are the dimensions of competitive product analysis?

Third, what is the purpose of your competitive product analysis?

Fourth, the 6 steps of competitive product analysis

Fifth, the reference framework and analysis cases of competitive product analysis

1. What is a “competitive product”?

To do competitive product analysis, we must first understand what competitive products are? How do you determine whether the selected product is in competition with yours and whether it is a competing product? Judge from four dimensions: industry, model, business, and user group.

1. Exactly the same competitors: Competitors with exactly the same industry, model, business, and user groups: such as Meituan and Ele.me, Youdao Notes and Yingxiangbi

2. Highly overlapping competitors: Competitors in the same industry but with different models and high overlap in business and users: JD.com and Tmall

3. Competitors with a certain degree of overlap: competitors whose industries and models are different, but whose businesses and users have a certain degree of overlap, such as Boss Direct Recruitment and Pulse. Both are aimed at users in the workplace. Boss Direct Pin mainly focuses on recruitment and job hunting, while Maimai focuses on workplace relationships and communication. Maimai also has a recruitment function, so their businesses and users are almost the same.

4. Potential competitors: Potential competitors with different industries and models, strong rivals that may be encountered at any time: Didi and Meituan. Meituan entered the taxi-hailing market from the dining scenario. For example, when people book a restaurant on Meituan and find that it is a bit far away, they consider taking a taxi there. After eating, they pay with Meituan and find that they want to take a taxi back. Therefore, for Didi, due to the business characteristics of Meituan, Meituan is a potential competitor and may develop at any time and become a highly overlapping competitor.

2. What is competitive product analysis?

Competitive product analysis, as the name suggests, is a comparative analysis of competitors' products. "The Art of War by Sun Tzu" mentioned: "Knowing yourself and the enemy, you can fight a hundred battles without danger; knowing yourself but not the enemy, you will win one and lose one; knowing neither the enemy nor yourself, you will lose every battle.

Below is a list of common analysis dimensions on the Internet. You can understand your competitors from the following dimensions. You can also modify the dimensions according to the purpose of the analysis.

1. Market position: the market position of competitors, market share, share, how much market space you have compared to yourself, how to seize the market, or estimate the degree of competition in this market and market prospects.

2. Core functions: The core functions or services of competitors, special functions, see what needs of users they meet, and whether there are any points worth referring to

3. Product experience: Analyze the product architecture and product interaction of competing products, what are the advantages in product experience, UI interface

4. Operation strategy: Analyze the operation strategies of competitors, why their users are so active and growing so fast, how to use them, and pay close attention to the activities of competitors.

5. Development trends: Discover the possible development trends of competitors from their data performance and functional iterations, and prepare for further competition

6. Business model: What value does the competitor create? How does it make money? Is it advertising, membership, games, bidding, or service fees?

Business model and strategy have become one of the most widely used terms in business today. They are two separate concepts that hold tremendous value. The business model describes how your business operates, while the competitive strategy explains how you will do it better than your competitors.

3. Purpose of Competitive Product Analysis

There are three main purposes of competitive product analysis:

Fourth, the 6 steps of competitive product analysis

When we do competitive product analysis, we must start from the end in mind. When we start to do competitive product analysis, we must clarify the goals and consider the output results.

The 6 steps of competitive product analysis are as follows:

Fifth, reference framework and cases for competitive product analysis

——————————————————————————

Boss Direct Hiring APP Competitive Product Analysis Report (Case Study)

1. Overview of Competitive Products

1.1 Basic Information

1.2 Purpose of Competitive Products

In-depth understanding of the current status and market conditions of the online recruitment industry

By analyzing the bosszhipin.com APP, we can understand its model and functional characteristics.

Discover the highlights and shortcomings of its products

1.3 Development History

Launched on March 13, 2014

On July 13, 2014, BOSS Direct was launched on the Apple App Store.

On September 22, 2016, "BOSS Zhipin" received C1 and C2 rounds of financing, totaling 28 million US dollars

In July 2019, BOSS Zhipin announced that it served over 60 million users and had annual revenue of RMB 1 billion, ranking among the top three in the industry.

1.4 Positioning & slogan

Positioning: Dedicated to building a platform for efficient communication and information equality between workplace bosses and job seekers.

Slogan: Job search tool - Looking for a job, I want to talk to the boss

1.5 Business Model

Boss Direct Recruitment’s main business model is that corporate users pay, and the company charges different positions and different monthly salaries. Currently, there are millions of companies using Boss Direct Hire, and Boss Direct Hire provides paid services to some of them. In addition, promotion fees for popular positions, resume analysis, etc. are all ways for Boss Direct to make profits.

2. Market Analysis

Regarding the industry report development information of an industry, there are often a large number of downloadable and searchable materials at iResearch Consulting, Analysys, DCCI Internet Data Center and other places. For example, the picture below is a report on the development of the recruitment industry that I found on iResearch. The key is that it is free.

Baidu iResearch data, search for "recruitment", under the research report search results, you can see the latest recruitment industry report

3. User Analysis

3.1 User Profile

3.1.1 User scale

Go to the iResearch APP Index page and find the Office Management category. Then click on "Online Recruitment" in the secondary category to see the number of independent devices of all online recruitment apps. Boss Direct Recruitment ranks third with 6.09 million devices.

For more information, you need to click on the details. Now you need to register first. To see detailed data, you need to pay, but you can apply for a 7-day free trial. You can enter the details immediately after submitting the information.

Number of monthly independent devices from June 2019 to May 2020

3.1.2 User Attributes

As can be seen from the figure below, among online job seekers, males account for 51.64% and female users account for 48.36%.

As shown in the figure below, the target user age of the product is 20-40 years old, mainly concentrated in the age groups of 24 years old and below and 25-35 years old, and the overall majority is young people;

3.1.3 Geographical Distribution of Users

From the above data analysis, it can be seen that BOSS Direct Recruitment users are mainly concentrated in first- and second-tier cities, mainly young people aged 20-25, and the majority of users are male. Therefore, attracting enterprises from second- and third-tier cities has become one of the main channels for expanding and increasing the number of users.

Of course, you can also query the crowd portrait through Baidu Index. On the Baidu Index website, enter "boss direct recruitment" to search for relevant data.

However, there are differences between the two types of data. Because this data is calculated through Baidu search engine algorithm, it is different from iResearch APP Index.

Crowd portrait analysis

3.2 User Demand Scenario Analysis

1: Direct chat, efficient and concise. Users can find a position in a company of their choice through Boss Direct Hire, get to know the boss online, and then decide whether to go for an interview, saving time.

2. Direct recruitment, strong sense of identity. The boss or business leader directly knows every job applicant. When he meets an excellent job applicant, he can take the initiative to communicate, understand the applicant's work ability, and invite him to the company for an interview.

3: BOSS direct recruitment, HR and boss work together. Job seekers can enter their personal information at any time and immediately create a micro resume. Bosses can publish recruitment requirements in real time and get immediate attention from job seekers. They can also publish JDs to Moments and WeChat groups to allow more reliable friends to recommend them. Bosses and job seekers can start chatting right after opening the software, using chatting instead of submitting resumes and applying for jobs; using chatting instead of screening resumes and phone interviews. At the same time, HR and BOSS can push candidate information to each other.

4. Functional Analysis

4.1 Information Architecture

4.2 Core Process

4.3 Functional Experience

4.4 Comparison with other competing products

4.4.2 Other comparisons

Author: Product Road

Source: Product Road (aipm12345)