It is critically important to fully understand what market you compete in. An overly narrow view of the market can blind a company to potential competitive threats, such as when railroads thought of themselves as “railroads” rather than as “transportation companies.” The purpose of this analysis is to create a picture of the market structure for your products or services, identifying the generic class, the product type, the product sub-type, and ultimately the brands that compete in each of these product sub-types. This will help you to identify the most important existing and potential competitors that you will be discussing in more detail later.