Content area
Full Text
Introduction
Firms today face constant pressure to maintain sustainable growth, stay ahead of their competitors, and present superior customer-centric products. It is impossible for any firm to adequately survive, without developing a thorough market perspective. One of the tools for gaining the market insight is by developing the right competitive intelligence that can have a far reaching strategic impact on a firm’s operations strategy and business process management. Following Amoako-Gyampah and Boye (2001, p. 59) in this paper, we examine the role of competitive acumen in designing operational-level strategy and business processes for business sustainability. Competitor analysis, a set of methods to assess the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors, is a key task for operations managers as they scan their competitive terrain, attempt to understand their market structure, shore up their defenses against likely competitive incursions, improve their business process of core activities, and plan competitive attack and response strategies (Aho and Uden, 2013; Allen and Helms, 2006; Bergen and Peteraf, 2002; Espino-Rodríguez and Rodríguez-Díaz, 2014). These methods to collect competitor information and draw inferences have been the lifeblood of operations managers and the focus of much academic research in the management literature (e.g. Grossler and Grübner, 2006; Hamel and Prahalad, 2005; Porac and Thomas, 1990; Porter, 1980, 1985; Zajac and Bazerman, 1991). It informs operations managers with product design strategies for the price sensitive audience, rich or simple product assortments or the differentiated mix of both. These have direct implications performance on a firm’s operations in terms of better quality, lower cost and flexibility in adapting to changing market trends (de Waal and Batenburg, 2014; Shamsuzzoha, 2011). Finally, operations managers will have to constantly refer to the updated competitive intelligence to re-engineer their product strategies according to changing market perspectives (Wieland et al., 2015). Previous research indicates that competitor analysis helps firms appreciate interactive market behavior, understand firm rivalry, strategize for superior competitive gains (Caves, 1984; Porter, 1980; Scherer and Ross, 1990), and improve their assessment of competitors’ competencies and the threats these represent (Zajac and Bazerman, 1991).
Competitor analysis is a multi-disciplinary function affecting sales, marketing, product development, operations strategy, and product re-engineering. It requires diverse information spanning these departments. In the past, with fewer available sources of information,...