Skip to contentWhy (and How) to Benchmark Your Brand Against the Competition in 2026
There was a time when consumers had just a handful of options when shopping for any given product. A trip to the department store meant choosing between a few well-known cosmetics brands, and that was about it.
Today, the landscape looks nothing like it used to. In 2024, U.S. supermarkets carried an average of 31,795 different items per store, according to the Food Marketing Institute. Amazon’s marketplace has exploded to over 350 million product listings, with more than 9 million active sellers from around the globe. And with AI-powered shopping tools like Amazon’s Rufus assistant—used by over 300 million customers in 2025—consumers are discovering new products faster than ever.
Consumers love having options. But the explosion of product offerings means brands face fiercer competition than ever before. Brands must work hard to attract and convert shoppers—and they must also focus on building relationships with existing customers so they stick around long-term.
Developing great products is paramount, but it’s never a one-time event. Customer preferences and expectations are constantly evolving—especially as AI, social commerce, and omnichannel experiences reshape how people shop. According to recent research, 70% of customers will abandon a brand after just two bad experiences. Brands must always be on the lookout for ways to improve their products and experiences, or risk losing business to a more relevant competitor.
One of the most effective ways to ensure your products continue to meet (and exceed) customer expectations is by continuously benchmarking your products and services against the competition.
What Is Benchmarking?
According to ASQ, benchmarking is the process of measuring your products, services, and processes against those of organizations known to be leaders in one or more aspects of their operations. For example, Costco is widely recognized for its pricing strategy and customer loyalty—it’s likely that other retailers benchmark membership retention and value perception KPIs against this gold standard.
Competitive benchmarking takes this a step further. It involves a brand determining how they stack up against their key competitors across products, services, and experiences. This means comparing specific metrics or KPIs to those of your top competitors. For example, Nike might benchmark their product ratings, store experiences, and app engagement against Adidas, On Running, and Hoka—brands that have surged in popularity in recent years.
Why Does Competitive Benchmarking Matter to Brands?
When you regularly benchmark your products, services, and experiences against your competitors, you develop a clearer understanding of what customers love about your brand. These are the things that set you apart—your competitive advantages—and you should capitalize on them. For example, if your brand’s customer service is known for going above and beyond, that’s something to highlight across marketing initiatives.
Competitive benchmarking can also reveal where your competitors are outperforming you. Research shows that companies strong in personalization are 48% more likely to exceed their revenue targets and 71% more likely to see a significant increase in loyalty. If a competitor is delivering more personalized experiences than you are, that’s a gap worth closing. You can leverage these insights to improve your products and experiences—and win greater market share.
What Metrics Should Brands Benchmark Against Competitors?
Benchmarking is a powerful way to improve your products, experiences, and sales performance. But which metrics should you focus on?
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. The metrics that matter most will vary based on your product offerings, sales channels, and customer base. However, there are several key areas the majority of brands should benchmark on a regular basis.
Price Benchmarking
Price remains one of the most important factors in purchase decisions—and in 2026, consumers are more price-sensitive than ever. Grocery shoppers, for instance, are actively comparing prices across channels, and the rise of private-label products is putting pressure on national brands to justify their pricing. Benchmarking your prices against the competition helps ensure your prices aren’t so high that you lose business—but still high enough to retain healthy profit margins.
Overall Brand Sentiment Benchmarking
Brand sentiment is the way consumers feel about your brand as a whole—positive, negative, or somewhere in between. Regularly measuring sentiment helps you identify what customers love (and don’t love) about your brand, and why.
It’s equally important to benchmark your brand sentiment against that of your competitors. In an era where 75% of consumers say poor customer service changes their purchasing behavior, understanding how your brand stacks up—and where you can make improvements—is essential for protecting and growing your market position.
Product Sentiment Benchmarking
In addition to benchmarking overall brand sentiment, it’s critical to benchmark sentiment at the category and product level. You need to understand how your specific product categories and individual products resonate with shoppers—and how that compares to your top competitors.
For example, imagine you’re a consumer packaged goods (CPG) company that sells a variety of shelf-stable foods, including protein bars. You’ll want to understand customer sentiment around your protein bar category (as well as individual products)—and then benchmark that against fast-growing competitors. With the ready-to-eat and prepared foods category projected to grow at a 7.7% CAGR through 2031, competition in this space is only getting more intense.
Benchmarking at the category and product level can be a powerful way to uncover insights that help you improve existing products—or identify gaps where a new product could capture demand.
In-Store Experience Benchmarking
Though ecommerce continues to grow, brick-and-mortar remains a critical channel. In 2024, in-store purchases still accounted for nearly 93% of all grocery sales. So if you have physical stores, delivering excellent in-person experiences is non-negotiable.
If a customer walks into a messy, disorganized store with unhelpful staff, they’re likely to leave without buying—potentially never to return. On the other hand, a great in-store experience drives purchases, repeat visits, and word-of-mouth referrals. Benchmarking your in-store experience against competitors is one of the best ways to uncover opportunities to make your stores even better.
Customer Service Benchmarking
For many consumers, customer service is a make-or-break factor. According to Salesforce, 80% of consumers say the experience a company provides is just as important as its products and services. And in 2026, the bar is rising fast: 68% of customers expect faster response times than they did just a year ago, and 63% expect agents to already know their needs before the conversation even starts.
It’s essential for brands to consistently track customer service KPIs—and compare those metrics to their competitors. For example, a brand might track how many reviews and questions posed via product Q&A they answer during a given month, and how quickly they respond. Then, the brand can compare the frequency and speed of their responses to that of their competitors. If you’re responding more consistently and faster, that’s a competitive advantage. If your responses are slower or less consistent, that’s a clear opportunity for improvement.
AI and Digital Experience Benchmarking
In 2026, benchmarking must extend to the digital and AI-driven experiences your brand offers. With 69% of support teams already using at least one form of AI and consumers increasingly expecting self-service options, brands that fall behind on digital innovation risk losing ground fast. Track how your AI-powered tools—chatbots, personalized recommendations, self-service portals—perform relative to competitors. Nearly 65% of customers don’t mind using AI as long as it appears to understand their needs, so the quality of these interactions matters just as much as their availability.
How Can Brands Start Benchmarking Against Competitors?
There are many tools available for brands to benchmark the metrics that matter most. One particularly powerful (but often overlooked) benchmarking tool is user-generated content—specifically ratings and reviews.
Ratings and reviews give you a unique window into how your brand’s feedback stacks up against key competitors. Start by determining the average star rating and average sentiment score for your brand, then see how these high-level metrics compare to those of your competitors.
You can also dig deeper into review content to identify trends that can help you improve products and experiences. For example, let’s say you’re a beauty company. You notice that one of your moisturizers has negative sentiment—specifically around packaging. So you dig into the review data and find that multiple customers mention the pump mechanism breaking within weeks of purchase. You can work with your design team to improve the packaging and better serve your customers.
While reviews are full of actionable insights, gleaning them manually can be incredibly challenging—especially if you collect different types of reviews across different channels. You might collect product reviews on your own website, Amazon, and key retail partners, while also collecting app reviews and location reviews.
But if you’re a Reputation Studio customer, it’s a lot easier.
With Reputation Studio, you can aggregate and manage all types of reviews from all sources in a single platform. Reputation Studio also offers rich, AI-powered insights that allow you to measure brand and product sentiment—and then benchmark against key competitors. You can use these insights to develop and optimize products and experiences your customers love.
Ready to see for yourself how Reputation Studio from 1440 can empower you to generate, monitor, respond to, and analyze reviews written about your brand and products across the internet?