Test Drive Your Competitors

A good article in the Harvard Blogs on really knowing you competitors by using, not just casually experiencing their products.   Doing that does not imply disloyalty. In our innovation center retail spaces we included competitive products.  That always impressed visitors that I hosted, but we started from the beginning wanting to have a 'library' of both our own and competitive products in their natural habitat, the store shelf.  Researchers, marketers and merchandisers should all have an intimate experience with the competition.  We needed to understand how they sat on the shelf, could be viewed next to our products, and were experienced by the shopper, in both the store and the home.  Early on we did some stocking up trips to local grocery stores and came back with huge loads of competitive goods, raising some grocery store eyebrows.  Even those trips were instructive in understanding product context.