Do you buy from your competitors?

[sun818]

What is your competition like? Is their customer service better than yours? Do they ship quickly? Pre-sales, after-sales support?

Would you lower your standards if all your competitor's service is much worse than yours?

[DonQ]

I don't think lowering standard would ever be good idea. If you are far in front in service, pulling yourself back just makes you more reachable to your competition.

[Hawkgirl]

Absolutely, this is one of the best things you can do!

At my previous company, we were customers not only of our direct competition but also of businesses that were even slightly similar in various ways. We sold various services, and I must've signed up for 10 different companies' services over the years, just to try them and see what they were like.

The experiences were invaluable - from start to finish. Every step in the process - home page, selection, sign-up, follow-up, customer service ... we analyzed *everything*.

The opportunity to learn from your competition is awesome. Even if it's learning what not to do - or, as sun818 mentioned, learning what you don't have to do. ;)

[beautykat]

There are a lot you can learn from your direct competitors. When we started our business, we purchased from our direct competitor, studied the time it took to arrive, packaging and after sales service. We also managed to obtain supplier information by purchasing from them!

Another thing that you want to do is to observe your competitor on a weekly basis. See what they are discounting, what type of new products and promotions are they running. From there, you can tell which products are selling well and which are not. Good luck!

[lgn1]

If you buy from the competition, make sure you don't use your companies address.

Sometimes the competition will have its own counter intelligence unit, and they may just provide you personalize terrible service.

Just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean somebody is not out their to get you :)

[shigamoto]

I buy from my competition at times. Mainly if it's something that I want but I don't carry myself. It will give you a lot of good info on how fast they are shipping, and how they pack and who they use to ship.

It's really a good research method, and you always get new ideas that you didn't think of before.