Strategic and Competitive Analysis: Methods and Techniques for Analyzing Business Competition (Paperback)

~ (Author), Babette Bensoussan (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

For Strategic Management courses. Most appropriate at the graduate level/EMBA/MBA courses. This book comprehensively examines the wide spectrum of techniques involved in analyzing business, competitive data, and information. Twenty-four analytical tools are discussed and evaluated with examples to illustrate their most effective application. Perfect as a supplement to any strategy course.

From the Back Cover

BASIC APPROACH

• This supplemental book examines the wide spectrum of techniques involved in analyzing business, competitive data, and information in a comprehensive manner with a strong bias toward application.
• Over twenty analytical tools are discussed and evaluated with examples to illustrate their most effective application.
Presents the most applicable techniques across a broad range of applications in the analysis process.

FEATURES/BENEFITS

Consistent format for each technique—description, background, rationale and implications, advantages, limitations, process, related tools.

Coverage of "classic" as well as more popular contemporary techniques.

FAROUT©—A unique evaluation process for each model identifying ease of, use and practicality.

Designed to be frequently used as a handy comparison and reference source.

Examinations and applications of techniques used in real organizations.

Please see the Prentice Hall Custom Business Web site for the largest
educational database available for the Strategy course.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 457 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; US ed edition (April 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0130888524
• ISBN-13: 978-0130888525
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #120,733 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Effectively covers the key bases, November 22, 2002

By A Customer

As a strategy consultant, I am often asked to provide my clients with well analyzed recommendations and findings. My biggest problem always has been to justify the methods I choose to reduce a wealth of data into something meaningful. For years now, I have relied upon Porter's classics and my strategy texts from my MBA program, but they usually aren't practically oriented. This book, better than any other I have seen, provides a straight forward set of instructions and directions, along with enough examples and charts, to keep me on the straight and narrow with my analyses. I do have a few beefs eith this book - as I do most of the others on my shelf. Unlike my strategy texts, the text isn't the most colourful, and it could have benefitted from even more samples although it is already quite large in size, and you cant read through the book from cover to cover, but I keep it handy anytime I'm applying a strategy method and it works great in that way. The other thing I would have liked is even more coverage of some of the newly evolving technology-focussed methods. These minor shortcomings aside, I'd recommend it to others who, like me, have to rely upon the application of proven methods to regularly produce findings for our business clients.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding one stop source for techniques and "how to", March 24, 2003

By	Martin Shanahan (Eastwood, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

It is rare to find a text that pulls together the many quite different techniques that can be used to analyze a business and the competitive environment in which it operates. This book does that, and more!

The authors have addressed their personal needs as much as the needs of those who will use the benefits of their labours. Now, when asked about a technique or asked for a recommendation as to how to attack an issue, one can turn to this one text and extract the most appropriate tool(s) and make sensible assessments of which of the various analytical tools is most appropriate.

The authors have gone one better - and I suspect that more than one MBA student will appreciate their efforts - they have included a very useful and quite comprehensive outline of financial analytical tools that add to the more "marketing" oriented techniques detailed in the core of the text. The various financial ratios are now at your fingertips. The financial analysis can be woven into the market and environmental competitive analysis.

Oh to have had access to this at an earlier stage of my career.

One of those indispensable tools. A "must have" in the office.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Selected as "the" text for government all-source analysts, January 13, 2004

By	Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

Amazon Verified Purchase

Edit of 21 Dec 07 to add links.

Rather than outline the wonderful aspects of this book, which other reviewers have done so ably, I will just say that I rank the authors up there with Ben Gilad (Israel), Mats Bjore (Sweden), and Jan Herring, Dick Klavens/Brad Ashton, and Leonard Fuld (USA), and we have made this book "the" text for the annual government all-source analysis training that centers on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT).

This book, in combination with Ben Gilad's Early Warning: Using Competitive Intelligence to Anticipate Market Shifts, Control Risk, and Create Powerful Strategies, the Leonard Fuld's The New Competitor Intelligence: The Complete Resource for Finding, Analyzing, and Using Information about Your Competitors, Dick Klavens and Brad Ashton's Keeping Abreast of Science and Technology: Technical Intelligence for Business, and Earth Intelligence Network's forthcoming edited book, "Commercial Intelligence: From Moral Green to Golden Peace," are the essential five books for any business intelligence professional or anyone seeking to understand best in class business intelligence.

Four of my own books may also be helpful as strategic context:
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time
THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest
On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World