Most teams collect competitor data — a screenshot of a promo, a photo of a storefront, a screenshot of an ad — and never define what they’re measuring. With no KPI, monitoring becomes a hobby: lots of effort, no decisions. An indicator is what separates surveillance from a pile of screenshots.
~60%
of digital retailers monitor competitors, but have no formal indicator linking the observation to a decision.
Batedor’s reading of CI maturity studies (Conversion, McKinsey)
What gets measured, improves. What isn’t measured is managed by intuition — and intuition doesn’t scale.
The 4 groups of competitive intelligence KPI
Speed
Reaction time to a competitor’s move.
Price/Promo
Observed depth and frequency of discounts.
Presence
Competitor’s share of voice and active paid media.
Assortment
Detected launches and stockouts.
Speed: competitive reaction time
It’s the KPI that most separates the leader from the laggard. It measures how many hours you take between the competitor making a move (an aggressive coupon, a new price) and you deciding what to do. Whoever reacts in hours protects margin; whoever reacts in days only cleans up the damage.
Average reaction time by store size (illustrative)
Fonte: Illustrative ranges for discussing an internal target.
Price and promotion: depth and frequency
Depth is the average size of the discount the competitor runs; frequency is how many times per week they structure an offer. Together, they reveal whether you’re in a price-war market or a value market.
Average discount depth by category (example)
Fonte: Didactic example; the reference line marks the set’s average (25%).
Presence: share of voice and active paid media
Whoever occupies more attention and paid media tends to grow. This group of KPIs has its own guide — see how to measure share of voice and engagement benchmark for the formula and the routine.
Assortment: launches and stockouts
How to build a CI dashboard (frequency per KPI)
Each KPI has its own cadence
Daily
Price of anchor SKUs and new active ads
What changes fast and hurts fast.
Weekly
Campaign frequency and discount depth
Promotional pressure trend.
Biweekly
Assortment launches and stockouts
The rival’s catalog movement.
Monthly
Share of voice and active paid media
Slice of attention and investment.
Good KPI vs vanity KPI
Vanity KPI
- “The competitor has 200k followers”
- Big number, no action
- No one owns it
Actionable KPI
- “We reacted in 28h, the target is 12h”
- A clear decision trigger
- Owner and cadence defined
Mistakes when defining a KPI
Referências e leitura complementar
- Drucker, P. (1967). The Effective Executive. Harper & Row.
- Davenport, T. & Harris, J. (2007). Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning. Harvard Business Review Press link .
- McKinsey & Company (2023). Analytics in Retail — The Margin Premium. McKinsey link .
- Porter, M. E. (1980). Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. Free Press.
- SCIP (2023). Competitive Intelligence Standards & Code of Ethics. Strategic & Competitive Intelligence Professionals link .
- Conversion (2024). Brazilian E-commerce Yearbook. Conversion / B-Capital link .
- Marr, B. (2012). Key Performance Indicators (KPI): The 75 Measures Every Manager Needs. Pearson link .
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