ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the differences between and the goals of an industry analysis and a competitor analysis. It describes the components of an industry analysis and shows that a Porter analysis is only part of an industry analysis, which in turn is part of an external analysis. The chapter discusses a macro-environmental analysis for a company and explains how to assess the attractiveness of a market. One of the components of the industry analysis is an examination of the market structure: How large are the various suppliers? Is there a strong power concentration? Are the products similar to each other, or does the customer perceive significant differences? An industry analysis examines all factors that may influence market attractiveness. These factors may be divided into three groups: macro-environmental factors, aggregated market factors, and industry structure factors. Economic factors are important for many companies because environmental variables influence the extent to which consumers are likely to purchase certain products.
