Competition is something that has been at the forefront of my mind since starting to work on onlyinpgh. Not only is it something that is repeated many times in business classes or articles, but analyzing competition, even if subconsciously, is usually how many venture ideas are started. The light bulb going off in someone's head one night when they think, "You know what would be great? If there was something that could do x." is basically a very cursory competitive analysis. After all, if you knew of someone doing exactly what you're talking about, then you wouldn't see it as a need, would you?
However, as the Competitor Analysis and Market Segmentation articles discuss, when it comes to competitive analysis, the devil is in the details of how you define competition and how you define your customers. No matter what need the product is addressing, it is being satisfied by someone at some level currently, and it's up to us to figure out how and how to do it better.
There are a TON of competitors for onlyinpgh, some of them established businesses and some of them more informal. People are currently finding things to do in a multitude of ways, and onlyinpgh is basically just trying to make it easier. The people looking for things to do can also be segmented in a multitude of ways, including undergrad college students, graduate-level college students, high school students, parents with families, long-time residents, out-of-town pleasure visitors, out-of-town business visitors...the list can go on and on. Each of these groups has different priorities and looks for things in very different ways.
My question is: where to start? In terms of competition, should it always be the most popular current provider of event information, or should it be the one that is the most similar to what I'm trying to do? In terms of individual users, should it be the one's I'm most familiar with (college students), or should it be the one's with the most disposable income (definitely NOT college students) or some other group?
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