Competitor analysis | EPFL Graph Search

Competitive analysis in marketing and strategic management is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors. This analysis provides both an offensive and defensive strategic context to identify opportunities and threats. Profiling combines all of the relevant sources of competitor analysis into one framework in the support of efficient and effective strategy formulation, implementation, monitoring and adjustment. Competitive analysis is an essential component of corporate strategy. It is argued that most firms do not conduct this type of analysis systematically enough. Instead, many enterprises operate on what is called "informal impressions, conjectures, and intuition gained through the tidbits of information about competitors every manager continually receives." As a result, traditional environmental scanning places many firms at risk of dangerous competitive blindspots due to a lack of robust competitor analysis. It is important to conduct the

Evidence on the effect of liberalisation and competition on innovation in the postal sector

Cátia Alexandra Pereira Felisberto

This paper empirically assesses the effect of liberalisation and competition on innovation in the postal sector. The analysis is restricted to end-to-end competition. The effect on the incentives to innovate of public ownership, letter volume, and other control variables is also tested. Data on liberalisation, competition and innovation in the postal sector is collected for seventeen European countries, over ten years. Three measures are used as proxies for innovation: (1) an innovation index based on a survey conducted for this purpose; (2) the accumulated number of innovations (based on the same survey); and (3) labour productivity. We also develop a liberalisation index in order to measure the percentage of market liberalised (in terms of letter volume). Several models are estimated by GLS and using PW-PCSE. In general, the models estimated have a high explanatory power. We find evidence that market liberalisation has a positive effect on innovation and that an increase in the market share of the competitors stimulates the investment in innovation, at least until the market share of the competitors reaches a certain threshold. Letter volume is also significant and has a positive impact on innovation. GDP per capita turns out to be significant and to have a positive relationship with innovation in all the models estimated.

2008

The effect of liberalisation on incumbent's innovation

Cátia Alexandra Pereira Felisberto

The network industries have been undergoing a process of reform, where liberalisation is one of the main features. This thesis studies the effect of liberalisation, with and without competition, on the incumbent's incentives to innovate. A model of incumbent network operator is developed and analysed when the incumbent is a monopolist, as well as when it faces an entrant. The objectives of the incumbent are specified in a general manner to allow for revenue, profit, and/or welfare maximisation. The marginal cost of the incumbent is assumed to depend upon the investment in new technologies and processes. A strictly convex and decreasing cost function is assumed. The incumbent maximises its objective function with respect to prices and to investment in innovation. The entrant is assumed to maximise profits with respect to prices. The incumbent's incentives to innovate under monopoly and duopoly are compared. One of the main results is that the difference between the investment in innovation under monopoly and under duopoly is determined by the incumbent's elasticity of demand under monopoly as well as by the incumbent's market share and elasticity of demand under duopoly. For certain values of these variables it exists an interval where duopoly provides more incentives to innovate than monopoly. The market share of the incumbent has a non-linear relationship with the investment in innovation under duopoly. Until a certain point an increase in the incumbent's market share creates more incentives to innovate under duopoly and from that point on the contrary happens. A decrease (in absolute value) in the incumbent's elasticity of demand has a negative effect on the incentives to innovate under both market structures. Another major result is that the incentives to innovate increase when the incumbent places greater weight on social welfare. The effect of liberalisation and competition on innovation in the postal sector is empirically assessed. The impact of the quantity supplied and of some control variables is also analysed. An original dataset is put together to perform the analysis. It includes data for seventeen European countries, over ten years. Innovation is measured using an innovation index, the accumulated number of innovations (both based on the results of a survey developed for this purpose), and labour productivity. A liberalisation index is built in order to measure the percentage of liberalised market. The econometric analysis performed, where several models were estimated by GLS and using PW-PCSE, shows that: (1) market liberalisation has a positive effect on innovation, and (2) an increase in the market share of the competitors stimulates the incumbent's investment in innovation, at least until the market share of the competitors reaches a certain threshold. Letter volume and GDP per capita are also significant and have a positive relationship with innovation. In general, the models estimated have a high explanatory power. The econometric analysis only considers end-to-end competition. The effect of upstream and downstream access on innovation is studied by way of three case studies (USPS, La Poste, and Royal Mail). The initial expectations of a positive relationship between both upstream and downstream access and innovation are confirmed.

EPFL2008

Liberalisation, competition and innovation in the postal sector

Cátia Alexandra Pereira Felisberto

This paper empirically assesses the effect of liberalisation and competition on innovation in the postal sector. The analysis is restricted to end-to-end competition. The effect on the incentives to innovate of letter volume, public ownership and other control variables is also tested. Data on liberalisation, competition and innovation in the postal sector is collected for seventeen European countries over eleven years. Three measures are used as proxies for innovation: (1) an innovation index based on a survey conducted for this purpose; (2) the accumulated number of innovations (based on the same survey); and (3) labour productivity. We also develop a liberalisation index to measure the percentage of market liberalised (in terms of letter volume). Several models are estimated by GLS. In general, the models estimated have a high explanatory power. We find evidence that market liberalisation has a positive effect on innovation and that an increase in the market share of the competitors stimulates the investment in innovation, at least until the market share of the competitors reaches a certain threshold. Letter volume is also significant and has a positive impact on innovation. GDP per capita turns out to be significant and has a positive relationship with innovation in all the models estimated.

Springer-Verlag2013

The effect of liberalisation on incumbent's innovation

Cátia Alexandra Pereira Felisberto

EPFL2008