What Is A Competitive Analysis?
A competitive analysis involves looking at those that compete in your market place, and using information about your competitors to identify where your strengths are relative to those competitors. One of the principles for becoming competitive is to leverage your strengths with respect to competitors, and minimize your weaknesses with respect to competitors.
A competitive analysis is really a subset of doing an environmental scan.
It may surprise you to know that a competitive analysis is useful, not only where companies compete for the dollars of consumers (e.g. in the retail arena, or restaurants or hotels), but can also apply to non-profit and charitable organizations. While it's a different kind of competition, these kinds of organizations compete for volunteers, donations and so on, even if the intent is quite different. Clearly most non-profits don't want to damage their "competitors" (other non-profits also doing good works), but they do need to consider that there is a form of competition in play.
See also: What Is An Environmental Scan