Sample deliverable — Competitive Scan

Client asked: "We sell single-origin coffee online at $22/12oz. Three competitors keep undercutting us at $16–18. Do we cut price, hold, or reposition?"

Scope: 5 named competitors, pricing architecture, shipping economics, retention mechanics. Out of scope per client: wholesale channel.

ROASTER A — $16.50/12oz, free ship $35+, subscription -15%. Volume play: 14 origins, none scoring above 86. Ships in 3 days from one warehouse. [S1–S3]
ROASTER B — $18/12oz but bags are 10oz (true $21.60/12oz — the undercut is packaging math). [S4,S5]
ROASTER C — $17, VC-backed, last raise 2023, hiring freeze visible on LinkedIn. Pricing likely unsustainable. [S6–S8]
ROASTER D — $24, thriving: ships within 48h of roast, prints roast date on box, 4.9★ on 2,100 reviews mentioning "freshness" 312 times. [S9–S11]
ROASTER E — $19, no subscription, 60% of traffic from one viral video in 2024, declining since. [S12]

The undercutters are not winning — they are churning. A’s subscriber reviews complain about staleness (single-warehouse model = 2–4 weeks off roast on arrival). B’s "lower price" is a smaller bag. C is burning runway.

The price-insensitive segment is visible and large: D charges MORE than you and grows, because they sell freshness as a verifiable fact (roast date, 48h ship) rather than an adjective.

Disagreement worth noting: industry commentary [S13] says specialty coffee is price-sensitive post-2024; D’s review volume and repeat-purchase signals [S11] contradict this for the freshness-led niche. We weight the behavioral evidence over the commentary.

1. DO NOT cut to $16–18. You would be matching a packaging trick and a dying balance sheet.
2. Steal D’s mechanics, not their price: print roast dates, commit to 72h roast-to-ship, say both on the product page. Your roasting schedule already supports this — it is a messaging fix, not an ops fix.
3. Introduce a $18.50 "roaster’s choice" SKU (blend, not single-origin) as the price-shopper catcher, protecting the $22 flagship.
4. Watch C for 2 quarters; if they fold, their subscriber base churns somewhere. Be the somewhere: a "switcher" landing page costs almost nothing now.

Confidence: high on 1–2 (direct evidence), medium on 3 (assumes your margin at $18.50 ≥ 38% — confirm before launch).

14 sources: competitor sites (archived snapshots so you can verify what we saw), review-platform exports, LinkedIn headcount data, two industry pricing surveys. Method: all pricing checked on the same day; packaging weights verified from product photos and listings, not marketing copy. What this scan cannot tell you: competitors’ actual unit economics — inferred only where flagged.