I’ll extend this and say, the only way to guarantee success is to pursue an a single niche to its extreme – be the only one serving a specific market in a specific way. I touched on this notion my One as the Ideal Podcast Audience Size thinking a while back.
From that perspective, there really is very little competition.
Wal-Mart and Target are both big box retailers, but the chances of anyone shopping at both are pretty slim. Each has their own identity and brand – those brands are similar only at the most cursory level.
Competition makes for easy press, but I think it detracts from serving customers.
This is not “benefits oriented” thinking. Competition is not defined by similarity in features but by the problems which are solved. With regards to the problem of hunger, grocery stores are in competition with gardening stores except for the hobby gardener and the floral gardener. When people raise vegetables to feed themselves, they are solving a problem.
An entrepreneur must not only examine whether or not there is someone else doing something similar, but also whether or not there is an alternative solution to the problem the buyer is seeking to solve.
Thus movie theaters are in competition both with TV manufacturers and with traveling circuses.
The entrepreneur who thinks that he has no competition is failing to engage in market research.
James, I completely agree – movie theaters are not only in “competition” w/ TV manufacturers and traveling circuses, but also Netflix, outside, board games, restaurants, parks, the internet, books, weblogs, telephones, museums, gardening, programming, and sitting around doing nuthin.
All of those options have the potential to be an entertaining way to spend 2 hours, but after that – they diverge into specifics which are more or less attractive.
With enough requirements – the solution becomes obvious.