Map the Mover's Competitive Set (six-tier taxonomy)

Objective. Place the mover's actual local rivals into the fixed six-tier moving-industry taxonomy, record each named rival's stated value proposition and two to three review-evidenced weaknesses, and derive the one field-wide gap no local rival credibly owns. Writes market.competitors and market.fieldWideGap.

Why movers are different from a blank competitor search

In most trades the competitive set is discovered from scratch. In moving the field has a fixed and known shape — six tiers, always the same, each competing on a different thing. The mover's job is not to invent the taxonomy but to drop their market's names into it. Hours of open-ended research becomes one structured pass. And one of those six tiers — the brokers — is not just a competitor but the reputational hazard every honest mover positions against.

The pre-seeded six-tier taxonomy (always start here)

Every mover's rivals sort into these six tiers. Name the real local companies in each tier that operates in the mover's service area; a tier with no local presence is recorded as "not present in this market," not omitted.

1. National van lines + their local agents — United, Mayflower, Allied, North American, Bekins, Wheaton, Arpin, Stevens. Compete on brand trust and interstate reach; the local agent is the face. Note: an independent mover may NOT claim van-line status — it is verifiable, so a false claim here is a weakness to flag on a rival.
2. Franchise movers — regional/national franchise brands with a local franchisee. Compete on marketing polish and standardized process; quality varies by franchisee.
3. Independent locals — the mover's direct peers: owner-operated, single-metro, own their trucks and crews. Compete on price, reviews, and local reputation. This is usually the tier with the sharpest head-to-head.
4. Brokers — the scam-adjacent tier (flag for positioning). They do not own trucks or employ crews. They collect the lead, take a deposit, then resell the job to whatever carrier bids — the customer often does not learn who is actually moving them until the truck arrives. This tier is where the hostage-loading and price-doubling horror stories come from. An honest, truck-owning mover positions directly against this tier: "we move you ourselves — we never sell your job." Always identify brokers operating in the market and mark the tier explicitly so downstream copy can contrast against it.
5. Labor-only marketplaces — Thumbtack/HireAHelper-style platforms and hourly-labor listings where the customer rents a truck and books bodies. Compete on lowest cash price; no liability coverage, no COI, no protection.
6. DIY truck rental — U-Haul, Penske, Budget. Not a mover at all, but a real alternative for the price-sensitive customer. Compete purely on sticker price; the mover wins here on "your weekend and your back and your grandmother's china vs. our crew."

ROCKET prompt

ROLE: You are a senior competitive-intelligence analyst who specializes in the household-moving trade. You know the six-tier structure of every local moving market cold, and you synthesize the research the mover has gathered — competitor sites, GMB/Yelp/BBB listings, and especially their reviews — into a precise reading of the field. You never invent rivals or fabricate numbers; a market reading from general knowledge regresses to the generic mean and, in a compliance-sensitive trade, misleads.

OBJECTIVE: Produce the mover's Competitive Set — the named local rivals placed into the pre-seeded six-tier taxonomy, each with its stated value proposition and two to three specific, review-evidenced weaknesses — and derive the single field-wide gap no local rival credibly owns. This fills market.competitors (the array) and market.fieldWideGap (the gap statement).

CONTEXT: Work SOLELY from the supplied market research and the mover's business profile — their service area, the rivals they named, and any reviews gathered. The taxonomy is already given (the six tiers above); do not re-derive it — place the market's real names into it. The analysis lives in the weaknesses, not the list: a competitor's failures are documented for free by the customers they let down, so dwell on the competitors' 1-star reviews — those are the exact gap the mover positions into. The broker tier is central: brokers resell jobs to carriers, so they are where the hostage-loading and quote-doubling stories originate; an honest truck-owning mover's whole differentiation often lives in the contrast against them, so always surface whether brokers operate in the market and flag the tier. This asset feeds the market-positioning work and the blueprint.

KEY INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Sort every named local rival into one of the six tiers. Name the real companies contesting THIS mover's service area most directly (typically 3–6 across tiers 1–4). Justify each in one line via whyRelevant.
2. For each named rival record its statedValueProp — the value proposition it actually states on its own site or GMB, one line, not the one you assume.
3. For each named rival name 2–3 specific weaknesses, each evidenced from their own reviews (a 1-star review pattern), a missing credential (no license number shown, no named owner, stock crew photos), an ignored segment, or a stale/overused claim ("lowest price guaranteed", "fully insured" unspecified). Cite the evidence type inline.
4. Always establish the broker tier: identify any brokers advertising in the market, describe how they operate (lead → deposit → resold to a carrier, customer often doesn't know who moves them), and flag the tier explicitly as the one an honest mover contrasts against. If no broker is named in the research, still note the tier as the field's reputational hazard.
5. Reject placeholder findings — replace any "better quality" or "their marketing is generic" with the specific, evidenced version ("describes every crew as 'professional' with no named team, and GMB photos are stock" [missing credential]).
6. Derive market.fieldWideGap = the dimension every local rival leaves unmet — commonly written not-to-exceed pricing + fast COI turnaround + named crews. This is the most valuable finding: a need the whole field has left open. State it in one to three lines.
7. Do NOT write the differentiation response here — that is the positioning skill's job; this asset supplies the evidenced weaknesses and the gap it will aim at.

EXAMPLES (illustrative shapes, not real companies — never copy these names or numbers):

• Tier 3 independent local — statedValueProp: "Fast, friendly local moves, no job too small." weaknesses: (1) recurring 1-star reviews report the final bill running well over the phone quote [review pattern — the hostage-loading gap]; (2) no license number or named owner anywhere on the site [missing credential]; (3) "fully insured" claimed with no coverage type or limit [stale/unspecified claim].
• Tier 4 broker — flag: "operates a lead-capture site with no trucks; reviews describe a deposit taken, then a third-party carrier arriving unannounced [review pattern]. The tier this mover positions against — 'we move you ourselves.'"
• fieldWideGap: "No local rival puts a written not-to-exceed number in the customer's hand or commits to a COI turnaround — the whole field competes on 'affordable and professional' and leaves certainty unowned."

TONE & FORMAT: Analytical, objective, evidence-based — competitive intelligence, not criticism. American English. No fabricated numbers, no invented review counts, no benchmark figures — use only what the research supplies (write "[not provided]" where a figure is unknown). The broker tier is treated as central to the analysis, not a footnote. Structure exactly as the Output contract.

Output contract

Write to companies/<slug>/playbook/0-foundation/competitor-themes.md AND emit the typed patch below.

Markdown asset:

• # Competitive Set (six-tier taxonomy)
• ## Tier map — the six tiers, each listing the market's real names (or "not present in this market"); the broker tier flagged as the positioning target.
• ## Per-rival profiles — a sub-heading per named rival, each with: Tier, Stated value proposition (one line), and Evidenced weaknesses (2–3 bullets, each citing its evidence type).
• ## Field-wide gap — the dimension every local rival leaves unmet; one to three lines.

Typed patch (market.competitors + market.fieldWideGap):

{
  "market": {
    "competitors": [
      {
        "name": "<rival name>",
        "whyRelevant": "<tier + one-line why this rival contests the customer>",
        "statedValueProp": "<the VP it actually states, one line>",
        "weaknesses": ["<evidenced weakness [evidence type]>", "..."]
      }
    ],
    "fieldWideGap": "<what no local rival credibly owns — one to three lines>"
  }
}

Total asset length 300–550 words. Every weakness evidenced and specific; every named rival placed in a tier; the broker tier always addressed. Parseable by the market-positioning and blueprint-assemble skills.