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“The presence of a competitor is always beneficial to a company. Competition forces a company to change itself in ways that improve its practices.”

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.


My Essay

In our modern day the business world is highly competitive. Greater access to foreign markets has brought with it increased competition and improved product awareness from clients and end users. Due to this phenomenon the role and meaning of competition have become more common in the public discourse. It is the contention of this writer that competition is healthy and essential to individual companies and the market in general.

Firstly increased competition equates to high standards in the products and services provided to consumers and end users. In order to maintain market share companies are compelled to achieve high levels of quality and innovation in the products they provide. This in turn secures the furture of such companies by fostering a loyal and satisfied client base. Furthermore, compromising quality would likely contribute to a long term decline in overall sales. For instance, consumers would find a way to buy less electronics if they knew that their average lifespan was a few months.

Secondly competition ensures good value to the consumers and users. To keep clients, companies must drive prices down by striving for high efficiencies. Given the intelligence of consumers today, artificially high prices are quickly identified and soundly rejected from the market. Driven by competition companies are less likely to find themselves in this position by continually reviewing and reducing their price points.

Some may argue that without competition, a company can seemingly set any price for a product or a service and ensure that customers will continue to buy that product or service. This actually ignores the fact that informed customers today will eventually find an alternative, even if it does not completely equate to the offering of the company, and consequently drive that company our of business. Moreover, this reasoning ignores that a sustainable company needs to operate at high efficiency which is largely driven by competition. The majority of companies are doomed to fail without the incentive to remain efficient, innovative and aware of the needs of clients.

Even though some advocate against competition in an open marketplace as a means to protect certain companies, evidence suggests that the alternative is true. Competition is essential to the long term viability of companies and a healthy market place driven by satisfied consumers.