As of 13 August 2026, AI can turn competitor research into a report.

What to actually do

1. Use a tool built for this

   The route this page recommends

2. Do it yourself

   Second choice

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open a document or spreadsheet and create one row for each competitor, with columns for source URL, evidence date, product, target customer, price, positioning, proof point and confidence.
   2. Gather current public competitor material from their websites, pricing pages, product pages, reviews and relevant UK market sources, then paste the relevant extracts and URLs into the research pack.
   3. Write down your own business context, target customers, objective and the decisions this report must support, including any internal pricing or product constraints.
   4. Paste the completed business context and research pack into an AI chatbot with the supplied prompt, then ask it to produce the report without adding unsupported claims.
   5. Compare every factual statement in the draft against the original source URL and evidence date, correcting or deleting claims that cannot be found in the research pack.
   6. Check every price, comparison and calculation against your current source material, then label assumptions and unresolved gaps before circulating the report.
   7. Ask a colleague who understands your customers and market to challenge the recommendations, and amend the final report only where the evidence or business objective supports the change.

   Prompt

   Turn the competitor research below into a clear competitor-analysis report for a UK business.
   
   Business context:
   - Business name: [BUSINESS NAME]
   - What we sell: [PRODUCT OR SERVICE]
   - Target customers: [TARGET CUSTOMERS]
   - Market and geography: [MARKET]
   - Business objective: [OBJECTIVE]
   - Competitors to compare: [COMPETITOR NAMES]
   
   Research pack:
   [PASTE YOUR NOTES, SOURCE EXTRACTS, URLs, PRICE LISTS, PRODUCT DETAILS, CUSTOMER FEEDBACK AND INTERNAL DATA HERE]
   
   Requirements:
   1. Use only evidence in the research pack. Do not invent facts, figures, competitors, sources or motives.
   2. Separate observed facts, reasonable inferences and recommendations under distinct headings.
   3. Preserve the source URL and evidence date beside every material competitor claim. If a source date is missing, write "date not supplied".
   4. Flag conflicting, outdated, incomplete or unverifiable evidence instead of resolving it silently.
   5. Compare competitors on offering, target customer, positioning, pricing, distribution, strengths, weaknesses and visible proof points only where the pack supports the comparison.
   6. Include a concise comparison table, an evidence-backed summary of market patterns, implications for our business, risks and unanswered questions.
   7. Give recommendations ranked by likely business value and ease of testing, with the evidence and assumptions behind each one. Do not present a recommendation as a fact.
   8. End with a source register and a short list of checks I must complete before sharing the report.
   9. Write in plain British English for a business audience. Use pounds where the supplied evidence uses pounds, and do not convert or estimate prices.
   
   Return the report with these headings: Executive summary, Scope and method, Competitor comparison, Evidence and market patterns, Implications, Recommendations, Risks and gaps, Checks before circulation, Source register.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.

3. Hand it to a person

   The distant third

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.