Finding My Competitors Keywords

Sorry robbeh, but there is no way the argument you are trying to make will ever hold up. For one, history has proven it wrong and will continue to do so forever. I am not trying to be nasty - just academic.

One of the most important aspects of being in business is having a firm understanding of who your competitors are, what their strategies are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and trying to predict what they will do next.

This is just sound business sense and forms the foundation of every industry and every class you are likely to take on business.

Think about it like a game of chess. Would you play a game of chess, blindly following your own path? Or would you factor your opponents position and likely subsequent moves into eveery single decision you make?

I know how I play chess.

What you call laziness I call leverage. Time is more valuable then money. If I can reduce the amount of time I spend on a certain task and still get good results I'm going to do that as long as it's legal and ethical to me. I look at learning from your competitors more along the lines of modeling those who are already successful.

Modeling works amazingly well in so many areas of life not just business. For example I started playing a game on xbox live called monday night combat. I checked out a few youtube videos of some top players and watched how they played the game...

An hour later I hopped on xbox live to play the game my self and instantly my performance improved. I was using little tactics and techniques I picked up from the videos I just watched.

I saved a bunch of time in my own improvement by copying what these great players learned through months of grinding it out...

I've had the same thing occur for affiliate campaigns, with writing, etc...Play smart and learn from the best when possible is my philosophy.

McDonald's does not dominate the industry. They may be the industry leader, but Burger King, Wendy's, etc are doing pretty darn well for themselves too.

Researching your competition does not make someone a follower. It makes them smart. You can improve upon their ideas.

This is what everyone in all walks of life do. In football, you see this all the time. One coach will create a certain style of offense. A year later, another coach will improve upon that offensive system. The spread offense that's become so popular is just an improved spin-off of some old 1970's style offenses that were commonly run in college.

Everyone copies someone else in some way. While you claim McDonald's is the industry leader and 100% original........they did not invent the hamburger. Their main seller was not invented by them. I'm fairly certain they didn't even invent the fast food burger joint. Wasn't White Castle actually the first fast-food burger joint?

What did McDonald's do? They improved upon someone else's idea. They made a burger people like at low cost, served up quickly.

Burger King, Wendy's, etc.... They all followed suit. Each adding some sort of menu item the other fast-food joints weren't. Wendy's had baked potatoes, for example.

Then Micky D's got the Extra Value meal. The rest then just copied, like they had to. They had no other choice.

Once one company started adding certain items, they all tried outdoing each other. Salads, wraps, different side items, etc...

Oh, and that Dollar Menu that Micky D's has now.........guess what? They copied that from the other fast-food joints that had 99 cent menus.

McDonald's is no more original than its competitors. Everyone copies something. It's just that the industry leaders are the ones that one-up the competition.