2-JOB DESCRIPTION

My current internship is my first one ever. When I first got the call for the position, I only had a slight idea of what I was getting into. At the end of May, I started my position as a market intelligence analyst of an aerospace and defense company. I thought it must do something with marketing, being intelligent, and analyzing data. 

 

After doing more research, the best definition I found is to oversee and profile competitors and competitive products and review market and competitor data to uncover market opportunities and address business issues. It is a small part of the marketing team, me being the second of two analysts in the whole company. To dissect this role more easily, the main components are to profile, compare, and assess competitors with ourselves. These help to find new opportunities and expand the company.  

 

The process results in two presentations, a competitive product comparison (looking at a specific market) or a competitive brief (looking at a specific company in a market). I use the competitive product comparison when assessing our competition and the competitive brief when looking to expand. This is because the one is general while the other is specific. 

 

Competitive Product Comparison (CPC)

I create a CPC by first choosing a product in our product line. I use a database and other online resources to find similar products in the market. Depending on the product, I compare 6-8 aspects such as flight time, weight, price, or types of sensors. I filter down the results until I have about 10-12 products that I found to be the most relevant and current. Think of it like trying to find a place to eat and slowly filtering down to a few options that look good. I organize my findings into a PowerPoint to compare to our product. I always look at contracts (orders) that each product is winning from the government. We want to make sure that we are staying competitive in the market. I also look at the aspects to see if there are any disadvantages of our product. For instance, a phone manufacturer wants to make sure that they are keeping up in terms of camera, resolution, and many other aspects.

 

I then write up a brief assessment to present to the rest of the marketing department. The purpose of the assessment is to try and determine whether we should slow down production, increase our presence, or maintain our position. We slow down production when we see that our product is falling behind others or other products have a competitive advantage that would cost too much to overcome. These advantages can be aspects like longer flight time, more advanced sensors, or significantly lower prices. If the market is growing and we are in a leading position we may want to grow at a up to the scale to the market. Last, we maintain our position to give ourselves more time to reassess where we stand at a future date.

 

Competitive Brief

I create a competitive brief with a similar process, however, the information I look for is more in-depth. When looking to expand into a new market (sell new types of products), I research the companies in the potential market. Again, a phone manufacturer might transition into selling laptops and would first see how the potential of the laptop market. Instead of only looking at their products and contracts I note their financials (money), leadership, and partnerships. I create a profile of their company by going through the same database, their websites, and company statements. Company statements can tell me their contracts, product changes, and partnerships. I put this all into a PowerPoint to compare with the other companies. 

 

My objective during this comparison is to see if it would make sense to enter the market. We do this by either buying a company already in the market, partnering, or making a product to compete. The financial and contract comparison shows whether one or a few companies have a large market share or segmented across many smaller companies and the profitability. The product comparison shows us whether the products are varied across companies. I also see if there are innovations or possibilities for growth. The leadership analysis how it changed or affected the company. It can be reasoning behind financial trouble or a slowdown in growth. This should help the rest of the team understand the market without needing to do further research.

 

 

Flesch Reading Ease: 54.3

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 1.0

Passive Sentences: 0%