Developing a Competitive Profile Matrix (CPM)

A CPM identifies an organisation's main competitors and their strengths and weaknesses in relation to itself. Follow these steps to develop your CPM:

STEP 1:Choose a company (your own if you are employed) referred to as sample company and identify three competitors (starbucks 1, Costa Coffee 2 and DuntinDonuts 3) based on research on the external environment of the industry (5-forces model).

STEP 2:Decide on a minimum of 5 and maximum of 10 critical success factors (CSFS) which you would like to compare your company to its competitors. CSFS include economic, political, technological forces as discussed (PESTLE).

STEP 3: Assign to each CSF a weight from 0.0 (unimportant) to 1.0 (very important). The sum of all weights must equal 1.

STEP 4: Assign a rating from 1-4 to each CSF based on research on competitors. Ratings refer to both strengths and weaknesses:

(4=major strength; 3=minor strength; 2=minor weakness; 1=major weakness).

STEP 5: Multiple the Weight' of each CSF by its 'rating' to determine the weighted score;

FINAL STEP: The highest score indicated the strongest competitor and lowest score the weakest competitor of your company starbucks.