Three of the other forces—industry rivalry, threat of new entrants, and threat of substitutes—arguably focus on different types of competitors.*2 Game theory models, meanwhile, conceptualize games as played with a competitor. Customers are secondary, conceived as the “prize” for which competitors are vying. One reason for this traditional emphasis on competitor over customers no doubt has to do with the accessibility and interpretability of data. It’s relatively easy to spot what the competition is doing in a given market, whereas it is considerably harder to discern customers’ motivations and
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