Established model
Strategic group mapping
Michael S. Hunt, developed by Michael E. Porter · 1972
Competitors cluster into groups following similar strategies, and the real rivalry happens inside a group.
Its place in the frameworkMarket Core›Competitors
What it does
Plotting rivals on two dimensions that matter in the industry — breadth against price, say, or service level against reach — shows clusters rather than a scatter. Two findings follow: you compete hardest with your own cluster, and the empty spaces on the map are either an opportunity or a place where a business model does not work, and telling those apart is the actual work.
- Reach for it when
- When a competitor list has grown long and undifferentiated, and when looking for an unoccupied position.
- Where it stops
- Everything depends on choosing the two dimensions, and the choice is where the analysis is really done. A map on the wrong axes shows tidy clusters that mean nothing.
Michael S. Hunt, doctoral dissertation, Harvard, 1972; developed in Michael E. Porter, Competitive Strategy, Free Press, 1980.
Why it sits at Competitors
Who else serves the same demand, what they can actually do, and where they are heading — read from evidence rather than from reputation.
A model is only useful when you reach for it at the right moment. This one answers a question that arises here — so it is filed here, and nowhere else. These are the working areas it serves:
- The competitor setLevitt on competition defined by the need served, and the substitution threat in Porter’s five forces.
- Capability comparisonThe resource-based view applied competitively: comparing capability rather than output.
- Reading their strategyPorter’s four-component competitor analysis: future goals, assumptions, current strategy and capabilities.
- MonitoringCompetitive-intelligence practice on indicator selection and the cost of undirected monitoring.
What it touches elsewhere
Nothing in a business is decided on its own. A conclusion reached with this model at Competitors lands in these other cores, whether or not anyone follows it there.
- Brand CorePositioning is argued against this set, and against the frame the customer actually uses.
- Business CoreCapability comparison is only interpretable against a clear reading of your own competences.
- Market OpportunitiesWhy nobody is serving an apparent opportunity is usually answered here.
- Data CoreMonitoring is a measurement programme and decays without an owner.
Filed at the same place
These answer questions that arise at Competitors too. Where they disagree with this one, the disagreement is the useful part.
- The five forcesProfitability in an industry is set by five pressures, and rivals are only one of them.
- Blue Ocean StrategyStop competing on the factors an industry already competes on, and change which factors are on the table at all.
- Disruptive innovationThe competitor that displaces you usually starts by serving customers you were glad to lose.
Elsewhere in Market Core
These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.
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