Competitor Analysis for the DIY Tools Sector

Initial Situation:

Looking ahead to the last quarter of 2021 and the upcoming Christmas business, we conducted a competitor analysis to find out what the current state regarding marketplace performance of several brands in the DIY tools sector is. We focussed on ratings, reviews and the brand specific sentiment on amazon.com. The used data has been analysed and prepared by our team using the gominga review management software.

We compared the power drill drivers of the following brands mainly based on their ratings, reviews and consumer sentiment:

Competitor analysis – overall review average

The average rating for all products in the “Power Drill” category is 4.77 stars for DeWalt. Overall, all brands perform very well here. Only Metabo is below the optimal rating average with 4.31 stars.

Good to know: 4,5 stars are the optimum on amazon.

“Products with 4.5 stars sell three times better than 5-star products”

Below 3.75 stars, there is often already the threat of exclusion from advertising programs. In this case no brand has to face consequences from Amazon itself.

What the review structure can reveal about products

The overall rating curve alone can reveal a lot about a certain product or brand. It is possible to detect inconsistencies in the rating trend, outbreaks and improvements. If you look at it more detailed you are able to differentiate between reviews written by verified and unverified amazon.com accounts.

But what are verified or unverified accounts?

Verified reviews: The customer has purchased the item from Amazon, which can be verified and traced to the user account.
Unverified reviews: Customers rate the item but did not buy it from Amazon. They may have purchased the item from another online store or brick-and-mortar retailer, and they don’t necessarily have to own it.

Black & Decker and DeWalt: comparing customer feedback

The graphs show the monthly average review rating of DeWalt in comparison to Black & Decker structured into overall, verified and unverified. In both cases it is very clear that the average of unverified reviews is significantly lower than verified reviews. That means unverified purchases indicate that consumers are probably less satisfied with the product they bought away from amazon or they did not buy it at all.

If you put DeWalt & Black & Decker in comparison, you’ll also see that DeWalt performs significantly better in average than Black & Decker which is really interesting because both of them are Stanley Black & Decker brands. A explanation for this observaton could simply be that DeWalt offers better customer service which can affect the overall brand.

If you want to know more about this competitor analysis, want us to look at another market for you or even if you are interested in our useful review management tool to do this yourself, do not hesitate to contact us!

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Competitor analysis using the gominga aspect-based sentiment analysis

Another important part of this competitor analysis for DIY tools and our review management tool in general is the sentiment analysis. Sentiment analysis is an approach for determining the positivity, negativity, and neutrality of data. It’s a strong tool for analyzing product feedback in customer reviews – in this case on Amazon.com.

Reviews offer a rich treasure of often unused customer feedback which can help to improve products and overall brand reputation. Manuel Siskowski (CEO of Wiesemann 1893) told us in an interview:

At this point, I don’t understand at all why review data is not used much better. In my opinion, it’s much more qualitative and much better than traditional market research data.

To demonstrate the power of this, we conducted a sentiment analysis for the DIY sector. In particular, “power drill drivers” of the above mentioned brands.

Sentiment analysis in the DIY tools sector for power drill drivers

This in-depth view of the DIY tools sector reveals some really interesting insights. Firstly, more than the half of reviews that mentioned some technical issues did it in a negative way.

Secondly, the batteries get some spotlight as well. 85% of every review that mentioned batteries did it in a positive context. This means that customers are mainly talking about “power drill driver” batteries in a positive way. Nontheless are 15% unsatisfied with batteries which is still a lot.

Let’s get even more into detail by looking at a specific brand!

Sentiment analysis for DeWalt power drill drivers

The in-depth view of DeWalt actually looks pretty similar to the overall DIY sector sentiment. Technical issues are a big point as well and the sentiment on the battery is even worse than in the overall sector. Don’t get me wrong, it is still okay but definitely has some room for improvement.

With the help of our review management tool that also captures the sentiment precisely, we took a closer look at battery and drills below.

Conclusion of the competitor analysis

The overall review standard and sentiment is already pretty good. But in conclusion, it can be said that the reviews, sentiment & questions in the DIY sector still offer potential for improvement. There are a few topics that can easily be identified with review management & sentiment analysis to improve the overall customer experience on Amazon.com.

This analysis proves once more that customer opinions help to further improve the own product and targeted customer service can further improve the reputation of one’s brand. Sentiment analysis in particular can even replace classic market research. As this competitor analysis has shown, analysing, reacting and merging reviews, ratings, questions and sentiments on a variety of plattforms is incredibly usefull for customer service and has direct impact on one’s brand.