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How to Write a Competitive Analysis for Your Business Plan

11 min. read

Updated January 3, 2024

Do you know who your competitors are? If you do, have you taken the time to conduct a thorough competitor analysis?

Knowing your competitors, how they operate, and the necessary benchmarks you need to hit are crucial to positioning your business for success. Investors will also want to see an analysis of the competition in your business plan.

In this guide, we’ll explore the significance of competitive analysis and guide you through the essential steps to conduct and write your own. 

You’ll learn how to identify and evaluate competitors to better understand the opportunities and threats to your business. And you’ll be given a four-step process to describe and visualize how your business fits within the competitive landscape.

• What is a competitive analysis?

A competitive analysis is the process of gathering information about your competitors and using it to identify their strengths and weaknesses. This information can then be used to develop strategies to improve your own business and gain a competitive advantage.

• How to conduct a competitive analysis

Before you start writing about the competition, you need to conduct your analysis. Here are the steps you need to take:

1. Identify your competitors

The first step in conducting a comprehensive competitive analysis is to identify your competitors. 

Start by creating a list of both direct and indirect competitors within your industry or market segment. Direct competitors offer similar products or services, while indirect competitors solve the same problems your company does, but with different products or services.

Keep in mind that this list may change over time. It’s crucial to revisit it regularly to keep track of any new entrants or changes to your current competitors. For instance, a new competitor may enter the market, or an existing competitor may change their product offerings.

2. Analyze the market

Once you’ve identified your competitors, you need to study the overall market. 

This includes the market size , growth rate, trends, and customer preferences. Be sure that you understand the key drivers of demand, demographic and psychographic profiles of your target audience , and any potential market gaps or opportunities.

Conducting a market analysis can require a significant amount of research and data collection. Luckily, if you’re writing a business plan you’ll follow this process to complete the market analysis section . So, doing this research has value for multiple parts of your plan.

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3. Create a competitive framework

You’ll need to establish criteria for comparing your business with competitors. You want the metrics and information you choose to provide answers to specific questions. (“Do we have the same customers?” “What features are offered?” “How many customers are being served?”)

Here are some common factors to consider including: 

• Market share
• Product/service offerings or features
• Distribution channels
• Target markets
• Marketing strategies
• Customer service

4. Research your competitors

You can now begin gathering information about your competitors. Because you spent the time to explore the market and set up a comparison framework—your research will be far more focused and easier to complete.

There’s no perfect research process, so start by exploring sources such as competitor websites, social media, customer reviews, industry reports, press releases, and public financial statements. You may also want to conduct primary research by interviewing customers, suppliers, or industry experts.

You can check out our full guide on conducting market research for more specific steps.

5. Assess their strengths and weaknesses

Evaluate each competitor based on the criteria you’ve established in the competitive framework. Identify their key strengths (competitive advantages) and weaknesses (areas where they underperform).

6. Identify opportunities and threats

Based on the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, identify opportunities (areas where you can outperform them) and threats (areas where they may outperform you) for your business. 

You can check out our full guide to conducting a SWOT analysis for more specific questions that you should ask as part of each step. 

• How to write your competitive analysis

Once you’ve done your research, it’s time to present your findings in your business plan. Here are the steps you need to take:

1. Determine who your audience is

Who you are writing a business plan for (investors, partners, employees, etc.) may require you to format your competitive analysis differently. 

For an internal business plan you’ll use with your team, the competition section should help them better understand the competition. You and your team will use it to look at comparative strengths and weaknesses to help you develop strategies to gain a competitive advantage.

For fundraising, your plan will be shared with potential investors or as part of a bank loan. In this case, you’re describing the competition to reassure your target reader. You are showing awareness and a firm understanding of the competition, and are positioned to take advantage of opportunities while avoiding the pitfalls.

2. Describe your competitive position

You need to know how your business stacks up, based on the values it offers to your chosen target market. To run this comparison, you’ll be using the same criteria from the competitive framework you completed earlier. You need to identify your competitive advantages and weaknesses, and any areas where you can improve.

The goal is positioning (setting your business up against the background of other offerings), and making that position clear to the target market. Here are a few questions to ask yourself in order to define your competitive position:

• How are you going to take advantage of your distinctive differences, in your customers’ eyes? 
• What are you doing better? 
• How do you work toward strengths and away from weaknesses?
• What do you want the world to think and say about you and how you compare to others?

3. Visualize your competitive position

There are a few different ways to present your competitive framework in your business plan. The first is a “positioning map” and the second is a “competitive matrix”. Depending on your needs, you can use one or both of these to communicate the information that you gathered during your competitive analysis:

Positioning map

The positioning map plots two product or business benefits across a horizontal and vertical axis. The furthest points of each represent opposite extremes (Hot and cold for example) that intersect in the middle. With this simple chart, you can drop your own business and the competition into the zone that best represents the combination of both factors.

I often refer to marketing expert Philip Kohler’s simple strategic positioning map of breakfast, shown here. You can easily draw your own map with any two factors of competition to see how a market stacks up.

It’s quite common to see the price on one axis and some important qualitative factor on the other, with the assumption that there should be a rough relationship between price and quality.

Competitive matrix

It’s pretty common for most business plans to also include a competitive matrix. It shows how different competitors stack up according to the factors identified in your competitive framework. 

How do you stack up against the others? Here’s what a typical competitive matrix looks like:

For the record, I’ve seen dozens of competitive matrices in plans and pitches. I’ve never seen a single one that didn’t show that this company does more of what the market wants than all others. So maybe that tells you something about credibility and how to increase it. Still, the ones I see are all in the context of seeking investment, so maybe that’s the nature of the game.

4. Explain your strategies for gaining a competitive edge

Your business plan should also explain the strategies your business will use to capitalize on the opportunities you’ve identified while mitigating any threats from competition. This may involve improving your product/service offerings, targeting underserved market segments, offering more attractive price points, focusing on better customer service, or developing innovative marketing strategies.

While you should cover these strategies in the competition section, this information should be expanded on further in other areas of your business plan. 

For example, based on your competitive analysis you show that most competitors have the same feature set. As part of your strategy, you see a few obvious ways to better serve your target market with additional product features. This information should be referenced within your products and services section to back up your problem and solution statement. 

• Why competition is a good thing

Business owners often wish that they had no competition. They think that with no competition, the entire market for their product or service will be theirs. That is simply not the case—especially for new startups that have truly innovative products and services. Here’s why:

Competition validates your idea

You know you have a good idea when other people are coming up with similar products or services. Competition validates the market and the fact that there are most likely customers for your new product. This also means that the costs of marketing and educating your market go down (see my next point).

Competition helps educate your target market

Being first-to-market can be a huge advantage. It also means that you will have to spend way more than the next player to educate customers about your new widget, your new solution to a problem, and your new approach to services. 

This is especially true for businesses that are extremely innovative. These first-to-market businesses will be facing customers that didn’t know that there was a solution to their problem . These potential customers might not even know that they have a problem that can be solved in a better way. 

If you’re a first-to-market company, you will have an uphill battle to educate consumers—an often expensive and time-consuming process. The 2nd-to-market will enjoy all the benefits of an educated marketplace without the large marketing expense.

Competition pushes you

Businesses that have little or no competition become stagnant. Customers have few alternatives to choose from, so there is no incentive to innovate. Constant competition ensures that your marketplace continues to evolve and that your product offering continues to evolve with it.

Competition forces focus & differentiation

Without competition, it’s easy to lose focus on your core business and your core customers and start expanding into areas that don’t serve your best customers. Competition forces you and your business to figure out how to be different than your competition while focusing on your customers. In the long term, competition will help you build a better business.

• What if there is no competition?

One mistake many new businesses make is thinking that just because nobody else is doing exactly what they’re doing, their business is a sure thing. If you’re struggling to find competitors, ask yourself these questions.

Is there a good reason why no one else is doing it?

The smart thing to do is ask yourself,  “Why isn’t anyone else doing it?”

It’s possible that nobody’s selling cod-liver frozen yogurt in your area because there’s simply no market for it. Ask around, talk to people, and do your market research. If you determine that you’ve got customers out there, you’re in good shape.

But that still doesn’t mean there’s no competition.

How are customers getting their needs met?

There may not be another cod-liver frozen yogurt shop within 500 miles. But maybe an online distributor sells cod-liver oil to do-it-yourselfers who make their own fro-yo at home. Or maybe your potential customers are eating frozen salmon pops right now. 

Are there any businesses that are indirect competitors?

Don’t think of competition as only other businesses that do exactly what you do. Think about what currently exists on the market that your product would displace.

It’s the difference between direct competition and indirect competition. When Henry Ford started successfully mass-producing automobiles in the U.S., he didn’t have other automakers to compete with. His competition was horse-and-buggy makers, bicycles, and railroads.

Do a competitive analysis, but don’t let it derail your planning

While it’s important that you know the competition, don’t get too caught up in the research. 

If all you do is track your competition and do endless competitive analyses, you won’t be able to come up with original ideas. You will end up looking and acting just like your competition. Instead, make a habit of NOT visiting your competition’s website, NOT going into their store, and NOT calling their sales office. 

Focus instead on how you can provide the best service possible and spend your time talking to your customers. Figure out how you can better serve the next person that walks in the door so that they become a lifetime customer, a reference, or a referral source.

If you focus too much on the competition, you will become a copycat. When that happens, it won’t matter to a customer if they walk into your store or the competition’s because you will both be the same.

Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software , a co-founder of Borland International, and a recognized expert in business planning. He has an MBA from Stanford and degrees with honors from the University of Oregon and the University of Notre Dame. Today, Tim dedicates most of his time to blogging, teaching and evangelizing for business planning.

Table of Contents

• Don't let competition derail planning

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How to Do a Competitive Analysis

Regular competitive analyses can help you spot opportunities to innovate, promote your business, enhance your products or services, and outshine your competition.

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A competitive analysis is a tool you can use to discover where your business is doing well, where you need to improve and which trends you need to get ahead of. Complete a competitive analysis when your company isn’t moving forward as fast as you want or when competitors are securing orders from your ideal customers.

In this article, we’ll explain the concept of a competitive analysis and how to perform one for your business.

How to complete a competitive analysis

Josh Rovner, business consultant and bestselling author of Unbreak the System: Diagnosing and Curing the Ten Critical Flaws in Your Company (Lioncrest Publishing, 2020), shared with us nine steps for completing a competitive analysis.

1. Identify the products or services you want to evaluate.

For most analyses, they will be the products or services that generate the highest revenues or demonstrate the most significant potential for growth.

2. Seek direct competitors.

These companies compete for roughly the same market with comparable products or services. For example, accountants competing against other accountants.

3. Pinpoint indirect competitors.

These companies target the same market but with different products or services. For example, accountants competing against bookkeepers.

4. Examine replacement competitors.

These companies offer a different product or service, but address the same issue as your products or services (for example, apps that assist entrepreneurs).

5. Determine which parts of your competitors’ businesses are worth investigating.

These aspects could be pricing, distribution and delivery strategies, market share, new products or services coming to market, who their long-standing, highest-spending customers are, the quality of after-sales support, and which sales and marketing channels they use.

6. Research all identified competitors.

You may only find minimal accounting and operational records for most competitors, especially nonpublic companies. Other useful information – like target customers, product features, type of staff employed and price points – will be easier to find.

7. Document your research in a written analysis.

Make sure your document is substantive and actionable, but not so long that your staff won’t read it. Comparison charts and graphs are useful to help you and your team visualize your position in the market in relation to your competitors.

8. Identify areas to improve and execute the changes.

Could you improve the quality of your products or services by adding or amending a feature, lowering the price to be more affordable or improving after-sales support? Could you achieve a better ROI on your marketing budget by investing in a more capable CRM for better lead management ?

Rovner recommends including information about related trends in your market and region for a more complete picture of the entire competitive landscape. “Document what threats are out there that could have a negative impact on your business, and document the opportunities out there that you could take advantage of better than your competitors.”

9. Track your results.

Measure your sales with a profit and loss statement to determine if the changes were successful.

Competitive analysis explained

A competitive analysis – also known as a competitor analysis – is a way of evaluating how well your business and its products or services are performing compared to other companies selling similar products or services in your market.

“A competitor analysis focuses on identifying market participants positioned to encroach on your opportunity and isolates each participant’s operational strengths, substantive weaknesses, product offerings, market dominance, and missed opportunities,” said David Taffet, CEO of Petal.

Competitor analyses help you improve your business in these ways:

• Identify your strengths and weaknesses. When you know where you’re ahead of the competition, you can focus your marketing message to press home that advantage. When you know where you’re behind, you can better understand how you need to improve your products, services or after-sales to exceed your competitors.
• Understand the marketplace you operate in. You know who many of your competitors are but you won’t know all of them right off the bat and may not be aware of the latest entrants to the market . Identifying your primary competitors (as well as any upcoming threats), and how they differ from your business is key to beating them.
• Evaluate trends in your sector. Which new or improved product, service or feature are competitors offering to gain an advantage? Which trends have they seen that you haven’t yet? By examining the behaviors and actions of other companies in your marketplace, you can judge whether they’ve taken the right course and whether you should be going head-to-head with them. [Related content: Top E-Commerce Challenges Facing SMBs ]
• Plan future growth. Want to be the third-largest firm in your sector instead of the fourth? A competitive analysis gives you the information you need to get there, including how much more you need to sell, the demographics to market and any skill gaps your organization has.

Factors your competitor analysis should include

Colin Schacherbauer, executive marketing assistant at Investor Deal Room, recommended the following 10 components for an effective competitor analysis.

Feature matrix

Find all the features that each direct competitor’s product or service has. Keep this information in a competitor insight spreadsheet to visualize how companies stack up against one another.

Market share percentage

Evaluating the marketplace by percentage helps identify the main competitors in your area. Don’t exclude larger competitors entirely, as they have much to teach you about how to succeed in your industry. Instead, practice the 80/20 rule: Keep an eye on 80% direct competitors (companies with similarly sized market shares) and 20% top competitors.

Pinpoint how much your competitors charge and where they fall on the quantity versus quality spectrum.

What type of marketing plan does each competitor employ? Look at competitors’ websites, their social media strategy, the type of events they sponsor, their SEO strategies, their taglines and current marketing campaigns. [Follow these tips to create a great business marketing plan .]

Differentiators

What makes your competitors unique and what do they advertise as their best qualities? How is that different from your company?

Identify what your competitors are doing well and what works for them. Do reviews indicate they have a superior product? Do they have high brand awareness? Can you test a competitor’s products yourself to see where they are performing better?

Identify what each competitor could be doing better to give you a competitive advantage. Do they have a weak social media strategy? Do they lack an online store? Is their website outdated?

Look at where your competitors are located and the regions they service. Are they brick-and-mortar companies or is the bulk of their business performed online?

Evaluate your competitors’ objectives, employee satisfaction and company culture . Are they the type of business that advertises the year it was established or are they recent startups? Read employee reviews for further insight into competitors’ culture. [Learn the best ways to improve your company culture .]

Customer reviews

Analyze your competitors’ customer reviews, both positive reviews and negative ones. In a 5-star system, look at 5-star, 3-star and 1-star reviews. Three-star reviews are often the most honest.

Benefits of carrying out a competitive analysis

In an era of digital innovation , no business can remain preserved in time and expect to survive. Companies can disappear overnight if they don’t pay attention to new trends. A clear example of this is Blockbuster’s catastrophic error of initially dismissing Netflix’s services. Today, Netflix is a juggernaut, while Blockbuster is virtually extinct.

Even if your sector is not susceptible to this type of seismic change, it’s worth knowing what drives your clients’ decision-making processes. By keeping a regular eye on your marketplace through a competitive analysis, you’ll also be aware of these trends:

• Changes to competitors’ existing products or services that make them more attractive
• New complementary products or services from your contenders that you could also offer or alter
• The threat posed by new market entrants or transformative products

“In some cases, you may find that you are at a competitive disadvantage, in which case you may need to make a change in order to maintain your sales volumes,” Rovner said. “In other cases, you may notice that you have an advantage that could enable you to make a change that increases your sales or profit.”

How often you should perform a competitive analysis

Regular competitive analysis is key. You may want to do the analysis once a year on a large scale and quarterly on a smaller scale.

“Too many businesses do a competitor analysis early on and then neglect it once their brand is established,” Schacherbauer added. “Industries are constantly changing, and each time a new company enters your space, they are doing a competitor analysis on you. It’s important to continually evaluate your competitors.”

Analyzing your business regularly against your competitors will reveal opportunities to improve your products, better serve your target customers and increase levels of profitability. You may also want to consider using another model – like Porter’s Five Forces – to further analyze the competition.

“Understanding one’s competitors allows one to distinguish oneself from the competition, focus on the underserved market opportunities, determine the services to offer, identify the best practices to employ and isolate the worst practices and rotten players,” Taffet said.

How competitive analyses help small businesses

Your successful business today won’t necessarily be a successful tomorrow if you don’t keep an eye on the competition. By employing a competitive analysis, you can evaluate the current marketplace and where you stand compared to your competitors. With that knowledge, you can make adjustments to set your company up for continued success.

Skye Schooley contributed to the writing and reporting in this article. Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.

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How to Write a Competitive Analysis for a Business Plan + Example

Written by Dave Lavinsky

If you are writing a business plan , hopefully by this point you’ve conducted thorough market research to identify industry trends and the target audience for your business. Now it’s time to conduct a competitive analysis. This section is included in virtually every simple business plan template , and the information you include will depend on several factors such as how many competitors there are, what they offer, and how large they are in comparison to your company.

Download our Ultimate Business Plan Template here

What is a Competitive Analysis?

A competitive analysis is a type of market research that identifies your competitors, their strengths and weaknesses, the business strategies they are using to compete with you, and what makes your business unique. Before writing this section it’s important to have all the information you collected during your market research phase. This may include market data such as revenue figures, cost trends, and the size of the industry.

Why Do You Need a Competitive Analysis?

In this section of your business plan, you need to provide an overview of your business competitors.

This is important since readers want to know 1) you understand your competitive environment, and 2) have competitive advantages that will allow your own business to succeed.

If you are planning to raise capital, the investor will require a business plan that includes the competitive analysis section. When entrepreneurs tell investors they have no competition, it often raises a red flag. This is because if there’s no competition, it signals that a market does not exist. Sometimes competition is indirect. For instance, when washing machines were invented, while there were no direct competitors (other washing machine brands), there was indirect competition (consumers manually washing their clothing).

This section will also come in handy if your company is considering increasing prices or adding new products and services. You can use the information you find to determine how well-positioned your business is to perform in the competitive landscape.

How To Conduct a Thorough Competitive Analysis

A comprehensive competitive analysis involves the following three steps:

• Identify Your Competition
• Select the Appropriate Competitors to Analyze
• Determine Your Competitive Advantage

1. Identify Your Competition

To start, you must align your definition of competition with that of investors. Investors define competition as to any service or product that a customer can use to fulfill the same need(s) as the company fulfills. This includes companies that offer similar products, substitute products, and other customer options (such as performing the service or building the product themselves). Under this broad definition, any business plan that claims there are no competitors greatly undermines the credibility of the management team.

When identifying competitors, companies often find themselves in a difficult position. On one hand, you may want to show that the business is unique (even under the investors’ broad definition) and list few or no competitors. However, this has a negative connotation. If no or few companies are in a market space, it implies that there may not be a large enough base of potential customers to support the company’s products and/or services.

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2. select the appropriate competitors to analyze.

Once your competition has been identified, you want to consider selecting the most appropriate competitors to analyze. Investors will expect that not all competitors are “apples-to-apples” (i.e., they do not offer identical products or services) and therefore will understand if you choose only companies that are closest in nature. So, you must detail both direct and, when applicable, indirect competitors.

Direct Competitors

Direct competitors are companies that fill the same customer need you do with the same or a similar solution. They serve the same potential customers with similar products and services. For example, direct competitors of a pizza shop would be other local pizza shops.

If you sell your products or services online, your direct competitors would also include companies whose website ranks in the top 5 positions for the same target keyword on Google. For example, if you are a home-based candle-making company , you would consider direct competitors to be other candle makers that offer similar products at similar prices. Online competitors would also include companies who rank for the following keywords: “homemade candles”, “handmade candles”, or “custom candles.”

Detail your direct competitors. What products/services do they offer? At what price points?

Indirect Competitors

Indirect competitors are those that serve the same target market with different products and services or a different target market with similar products and services. They fill the same customer need you do with a different solution. For example, a supermarket that sells frozen pizzas would be an indirect competitor to a pizza shop.

In some cases, you can identify indirect competitors by looking at alternative channels of distribution. For example, a small business selling a product online may compete with a big-box retailer that sells similar products at a lower price.

Detail your indirect competitors. What products/services do they offer? At what price points? Use the same 9-point checklist mentioned above for direct competitors.

Analyze Competitors

After selecting the appropriate competitors, you must conduct primary and secondary research on them to learn more about how they are conducting their business and what drives customers to purchase from them. Here are some methods you can use to learn more about your competitors:

Primary Market Research Methods

• Customer Interviews: Directly ask customers about their preferences, needs, and perceptions of your competitors.
• Surveys: Gather quantitative data on customer satisfaction, brand awareness, and perceived value.
• Focus Groups: Facilitate discussions among a group of customers to gain insights into their decision-making processes.
• Mystery Shopping: Conduct undercover shopping experiences to assess competitor’s customer service, product quality, and pricing.

Secondary Market Research Methods

• Industry Reports: Analyze reports from market research firms to identify market trends, challenges, and opportunities.
• Business Websites: Gather information on products, services, pricing, marketing strategies, and customer reviews.
• Social Media Monitoring: Track competitor’s social media activity to gauge brand perception and customer engagement.
• News Articles and Press Releases: Stay updated on competitor’s recent news, acquisitions, and strategic partnerships.
• Financial Reports: Analyze competitor’s financial performance to assess their strengths and weaknesses.

With these primary and secondary research methods, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of your competitive landscape and develop effective strategies to differentiate your business.

For each of your primary competitors, perform a SWOT Analysis and create a competitive matrix to identify their strengths and weaknesses, market presence, compare product features, and more, and identify opportunities where your business can succeed.

For each of your main competitors, you should research the following information:

• Competitor Name
• Competitor Overview (company history; how long have they been operating)
• Product and/or Service Offerings
• Pricing Strategy
• Revenue Streams
• Estimated Market Share
• Location(s)
• Target Customers (Service and Market Segment)
• Sales and Marketing Tactics
• Customer Reviews

By understanding what your competitors offer and how customers perceive them, you can determine your company’s competitive advantage against each competitor.

3. Determine Your Competitive Advantage

In this part of your competitive analysis, you need to detail the reasons your business is in a competitive position to outperform both direct and indirect competitors, and how the company’s business model creates barriers to entry. “Barriers to entry” are reasons why it would be difficult for new companies to enter into or compete in the same market.

For instance, you may have a patent that provides value to your customers and makes them less likely to switch suppliers, which protects your business from potential competitors. Or, you may have more resources than the competition and thus be able to provide superior customer service.

Below is a list of areas in which you might have competitive edge or advantage. Review each and expand upon the relevant ones:

• Size of the Company – Large companies have more resources and can usually offer lower prices than smaller businesses. This is a significant barrier to entry, as starting a small business and competing with a larger company may be difficult.
• Product or Service Differentiation – If your product or service is unique in some way, this will make it less likely that customers will switch to a competitor.
• Experience & Expertise – Experience and knowledge are valuable attributes that can help differentiate you from the competition.
• Location – If you are located in an area where there is high demand for your product or service, this can be a barrier to entry because competitors will not want to open new locations.
• Patents & Copyrights – Protecting intellectual property can prevent others from entering the same market and competing with your company.
• Brand Recognition – Customers are loyal to brands they have come to trust, which protects the company from new competitors.
• Customer Service – Providing excellent customer service can help you retain customers and prevent them from switching suppliers.
• Lowest Cost Offerings – If you can offer a lower price than your competitors, this makes it more difficult for them to compete with you.
• Technology – New technology that enables you to provide a better product or service than your competitors can be an advantage.
• Strategic Partnerships & Alliances – Collaborating with a company that your customers want to work with can help keep them from switching.
• Human Resources – If you have a highly skilled and talented workforce, it can be difficult for competitors to find and employ the same skills.
• Operational Systems – Strong operational systems that lead to greater efficiencies can protect your business from the competition.
• Marketing Strategy – Investing in strong marketing strategies can make your business difficult to compete with.

For instance, you could say that your [enter any of the bullets from above] is better than your competitors because [insert reason].

Competitive Analysis Example

The bend brew shop: competitive analysis.

The Bend Brew Shop is a new specialty coffee shop and brewery in Bend, Oregon. We offer a unique blend of high-quality coffee, craft beer, and a welcoming atmosphere. Our goal is to become a beloved local hangout, known for its exceptional beverages and friendly service.

Direct Competitors:

• Thump Coffee Roasters: A local roaster known for its dark roasts and strong coffee.
• Deschutes Brewery Public House: A popular brewery and restaurant offering a wide range of beers and food.
• Boneyard Beer Pub: A local brewery with a strong following, particularly among beer enthusiasts.

Indirect Competitors:

• Starbucks: A global coffee chain with multiple locations in Bend.
• McMenamins: A regional chain offering food, drinks, and lodging.
• Dutch Bros Coffee: A drive-thru coffee chain with a strong local presence.

SWOT Analysis

Competitive advantages.

• Unique Blend of Coffee and Beer: We offer a unique combination of high-quality coffee and craft beer, appealing to a wider range of customers.
• Community-Focused Atmosphere: We aim to create a welcoming and inclusive space for locals and visitors alike.
• High-Quality Ingredients and Expert Baristas: We source the finest beans and hops, and our staff is trained to create exceptional beverages.
• Strong Local Partnerships: We collaborate with local businesses to offer unique experiences and support the community.

By understanding our competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, we can position The Bend Brew Shop to capitalize on our unique selling points and build a loyal customer base.

The competitive landscape is one of the most important considerations in developing a business plan since it sets the stage by providing information on past and current competitors and their respective strengths and weaknesses. A strong understanding of the market landscape is needed before you can develop a business strategy for differentiating your company from the competition. Follow the above guidelines for conducting a thorough competitor analysis, and you will be well-prepared to create a winning competitive analysis section for your business plan.

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