1. DOGGY WALKER:

 

 

 

 

 

Doggy Walker is a Company specialized in dog walks and pet sitting. It was created a proximally 3 years ago (2012) when the basic necessity of a formal company for dog walks was needed. Their mission is “to treat your dog and home with the love, care and respect we would use to treat our own. We believe in nurturing dogs in their home environment and helping them follows a consistent and reliable schedule”.

 

Doggy Walkers is the major competitor in the industry for dog walks due to the fact that in Bogotá is the only formalized company that offers this kind of service. This means that customers rely more on an organization that has is bases and is recognize as a company.

 

This organization offers different types of dog walks and a service for pet sitting, but moreover the principal strengths for this company are its “first move advantage” and its three years of service that have leave them to a more recognizable position. In addition, they offer 6 facts that are recognized as advantages and value for customers.

 

In first place they compromise to do not have more than 6 dogs per groups, meaning that customer’s dogs will get personal attention. Second the offer insurance for dogs, giving the opportunity to have an extra care if something happens. Third, their groups are organized by size due to the fact that different sized dogs walk differently and need different amount of exercise. Forth, the promise to have the most reliable, dog loving dog walkers, so they can generate confidence to customers and secure that their dogs will be in good hands. Fifth, they have all equipment to walk in any weather, so no matter what the conditions are, plans are not cancelled and they still walk as promised. And the last one is the alternative to have personalized walks, where they offer a specialist that can generate a personal plan depending on the dog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With this we can conclude that Doggy Walker first objective is to be Bogotá’s dog owner’s first choice when wanting someone to walk their dogs. This organization has developed a strategy in many ways by first taking advantage of technology and creating a web page where all the information is in and additionally be requested by some local channels to broadcast video clips about them. This firm also has established a perimeter where they can be visible and more so because it is where most residence from people of high social classes lives, knowing well the market they are getting in.

 

The weakness that can be observe are first the lack of presence in social networks, which will actually contain many potential customers that do not know about this service yet and as second, they present elevated prices compared to other informal dog walkers, where it can be concluded that different kind of people that might be interested are not willing to pay that price and prefer to stay with informal walkers (there can be cases, but it is belief that there are not that much).

 

As said before, this organization only offers the service for dog walks and pet sitting, but although they only work with these two alternatives, Doggy Walker is a company that is growing in the industry and that has taken force due to being the only ones formalized in the market.

 

Doggy Walker. (2012, November 11). DoggyWalker. Retrieved August 21, 2015, from Doggy Walker: http://www.doggywalkerbogota.com/#!home-english/ce57

 

 

2. INFORMAL DOG WALKERS:

 

The webpage called “holamascota” is where people can post adds about their work, products they are selling, veterinaries, adds for dog´s school, dog´s daycare, etc. People can enter the department where they live (in this case to see the competition: Cundinamarca, Bogotá) and different results appear of ads that people post about dog walkers. These are informal dog walkers which don’t have a stablish company so they have posted their ads in this webpage for people to know them:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Paseador”, is a dog walker men called Andrés which works as independent and doesn’t have a company for his business. Its weakness is that he is not confirmed by a well-structured company as we plan to organize Doggy Buddy. However, Andrés is already part of the market and have customers for its business. This competitor for Doggy Buddy can be affected by the extra services our organization will offer and because of the trust the customers will have to us since we will be an organization approved by the government and their pets will be in good hands. This business although is so informal it’s affected by the fluctuations in the same variables as our organization. The only variables that don’t affect this kind of informal business are the government regulations or laws that a company must follow to begin. “Paseador” is affected by the others variables since he depend on the demands and the quantity of demands depends and is affected by the other variables.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Excelentepaseadora de perros” is another independent business that focuses on walking dogs in the north of Bogotá which is the area where our company pretends to operate. This business has many weaknesses comparing it to our core business since first of all she doesn’t have a well establish company or even a website. Also, they only provide walks while Doggy Buddy provides additional services such as: training and bath. It’s difficult to know the strengths of this kind of business since they are not an actual company. However, a strength “Excelentepaseadora de perros” has is that they are already in the market, they have post ads in the website so people already know them, and they don’t have expenses since they have no one to pay, locations to pay, or all expenses that a real organization carries. Its objective is to earn all the incomes of the business for her since the owner of the business is the one in charge of walking the dogs. This business can be affected by the strategies and objectives Doggy Buggy have because we plan to organize a complete and formalize business providing our customers the safety of their dogs as they will be in hands of professionals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“DOG CAMINANTES” is the third ad that appear in the webpage in Bogotá. As you can see in the information on top, they specialized in Chapinero which is a neighborhood in the capital. This neighborhood doesn’t cover the area Doggy Buddy will attend but if they extend they will be a direct competitor to our organization. The strengths of this business, compared to the other ones are that they offer its service also on Saturday, Sunday and holidays and their price is the cheapest one. Also, in the description of the service in the ad, she stated that she have years of experience with pets and that provides trust to customers. The weakness is the same as the other two other business: not a formal structured organization. This an advantage for Doggy Buddy.  Its objective is to have extra incomes since she is a college student and its main strategy is to have flexible schedule to coordinate with her customers.

 

As informal business of dog walkers are so informal, they don’t have competitive intelligence in their business strategies. This 3 business don’t analyze their competitors as deep as they should. Most of them said that they only found out what prices do informal dog walkers have to impose their personal price and that’s it.

 

3. INSIGNIA:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Insignia is a company specialized in dog training to all kind of dogs. This company offers other services like, day care, walks and veterinarian supervision,  but their principle and useful service is the professional training. The also have domiciliary teaching.

 

This competitor of Doggy Body can be affected by the extra services our organization will offer, in this case the training, because costumers will prefer to train their dogs in a company that is professional and dedicated in that area, like Insignia; this company first service is training, that means that professional training area is their strength. That will be considered a weakness to our company because costumers will prefer companies like insignia to train their dogs.

 

In the other hand, doggy buddy first service is the dog walk. Insignia also offer walks, but it is not their strength, this is an additional service of the company. In this way costumers will prefer our company because we are specialized on the area of dog walks.

 

http://www.insigniacanina.com/

 

ANALYSIS/CONCLUSION:

 

The competitive forces are some variables that are very important in our industry as our organization must know and identify the competition and their strategies in order to apply them and be a strong company that could enter into this market. Basically our industry is not that competitive and not that big as in Bogotá there are only a few companies that offers a service related to dogs. Only few companies offer the same service that we want to offer to our costumers which is call “Doggy Walker” which is a specialized company who take dogs for a walk and that taken care of them to. By analyzing this company we conclude that this is our direct competition as is the biggest and more organized company in our industry and that it also develop and have very good plans and long term objectives.

 

On the other hand we have other competitors which are the independent dog’s walkers in Bogotá which they actually are a huge amount. This will affect our business in some way as people probably will prefer to use this independent walker’s service than using our service this is because independent walker’s service is cheaper than ours. But this is way Doggy Buddy will apply some strategies and plans in order to gain brand recognition and brand loyalty.

 

By analyzing and evaluating our main competitors we conclude that Doggy Buddy needs many plans and clear objectives in order to develop them during the next years in order to gain recognition and be the best company of dog’s services in Bogotá. Additionally also factors such as; innovation and respond to change are some factors that we have to take them into account as there are vital for any highly competitive markets as internal and external variables are changing constantly in the environment. Following these factors Doggy Buddy could be a very huge company in this industry as we will focus on our competitor’s weaknesses and strengths in order to see their performance and try to improve them day after day for reaching success.