COMPETITORS ARE STAKEHOLDERS
No matter what business you're in, your competitors are, without question, stakeholders. I've written extensively about this topic, including identifying the top four reasons here.
Remember, stakeholders are people and groups that can directly or indirectly influence or be influenced by a company's performance.
More and more marketers are viewing competitors as potential collaborators and certainly as customers, in the right situation.
Natalie Massenet, founder of the highly successful online luxury retailer Net-A-Porter, writes in Wired that this year, 'the most successful businesses will be characterised by collaboration between businesses in the same sector, different sectors or with their customers'. Her bottom line: 'Competition creates win-lose scenarios, but collaboration benefits us all'.
Netflix competes with Amazon in the market for streaming entertainment, yet Netflix buys its cloud storage services exclusively from Amazon Web Services. Why? Because Amazon has already solved the most challenging problems that Netflix would face if it built a cloud system on its own--and Amazon continuously improves the services that Netflix buys. So Netflix turns out to be an excellent customer for Amazon, and the relationship benefits both.
Notice that I'm not suggesting competitors collude to set prices or do anything else that is unethical or illegal. Competitors can and should be fierce rivals. Still, they can also consider collaborating when both parties would benefit or buy from each other when the situation makes sense.
