Strategy question
Would you consider Amazon and Intuit to be competitors?
- Amazon
- Strategy
- Medium
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What this question tests
Tests competitive analysis reasoning, requiring the candidate to define what dimension competition is being measured on rather than a simple yes or no.
How to approach it
- Clarify what competing means here: for customer spend, for a specific product category, or for platform ecosystem dominance.
- Map what each company actually offers: Amazon spans e-commerce, cloud (AWS), logistics and increasingly SMB tools; Intuit focuses on financial software (QuickBooks, TurboTax, Mailchimp).
- Identify the overlap point: both increasingly serve small and medium businesses with financial and operational tooling, which is the real point of contact.
- Conclude they aren't direct competitors today, since core businesses differ, but flag Amazon's SMB seller tools and financial services (Amazon Lending, Amazon Business) as an emerging adjacency.
- Explain the strategic implication: Intuit should watch Amazon's SMB financial tooling as a long-term adjacent threat, not treat it as a current head-to-head competitor.
- State the answer as conditional on the specific business line being compared, not a blanket yes or no.
What a strong answer includes
- Refuses a simple yes or no and instead maps the actual business lines of each company before answering.
- Identifies the real overlap, SMB financial and operational tooling, rather than a surface-level comparison.
- Uses concrete product names, QuickBooks and Amazon Business, to ground the analysis in reality.
- Distinguishes current competition from a plausible future adjacency, showing forward-looking thinking.
Common mistakes
- Answering with a flat yes or no without defining the dimension of competition.
- Comparing company size or brand instead of actual product overlap.
- Ignoring that both companies serve overlapping SMB customers even if their core products differ.
Likely follow-up questions
- What would make Amazon a real threat to Intuit's core QuickBooks business?
- How should Intuit respond to this adjacency risk?
- Are there other companies you'd consider closer competitors to Intuit?
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Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovery and strategy for AI products
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop