Study the mechanism, not the video. What you want from competitor research is why a piece of content converts – what converts and what does not – which objection it handles, which moment it shows, how it opens – not a shot list to reproduce. Copying a competitor’s video gets you their positioning, their price expectation and none of their audience relationship.
What to extract
The opening. How do converting videos in your category start? Straight to the product? A problem? A result shown upfront? This is the most transferable thing you will find and the highest-leverage change to your own content.
The objection being handled. Every converting video addresses a hesitation. Identify which one – price, authenticity, size, durability, whether it actually works. That tells you what buyers in your category are actually worried about, which is worth more than the video itself.
The demonstration. What moment do they show, and how long do they spend on it? Categories differ sharply here.
The format mix. Talking head, demonstration, comparison, unboxing, before-and-after. Which dominates among the videos that sell?
Volume and cadence. How many videos are behind their best-selling products, and where do they come from? Usually the answer is a large affiliate base, which is a content volume finding rather than a creative one.
What not to take
Their price. Their exact script. Their claims – particularly in health, beauty and food, where a competitor making an aggressive claim may simply not have been caught yet, and copying it inherits the risk.
And not their entire video. Beyond the intellectual property question, a near-identical video sitting next to theirs in the same feed makes you look like the imitation, which is a poor position from which to charge more.
The pricing trap this exposes
The most common finding from honest competitor research is uncomfortable: your product is priced above the market.
Malaysian TikTok categories are price-sensitive and often dominated by sellers with thinner cost bases, which is a structural feature of how TikTok Shop works here. A brand with real production costs looks at the category and concludes it cannot compete.
Two responses, and only one of them works.
Matching the market price destroys the margin, and you rarely win anyway – there is usually someone cheaper.
The alternative is content that does the educating. Explain why the product costs what it costs – the ingredient, the material, the process, the durability, the fact that it lasts three times as long. You are building a market at a price point rather than competing in an existing one at a price you cannot sustain. It is slower and it requires more content, which is the real cost.
That is a strategic decision about the business, not a content decision. Research surfaces it; it does not solve it.
Do it periodically, not constantly
Quarterly is enough for most shops. Categories shift, but not weekly, and operators who watch competitors daily end up reacting to noise and changing their own approach before it has had time to work.
Look at what is selling, not what is being posted. Volume of posts tells you about their production capacity. Conversion tells you what the market responds to.
Common questions
What tools should I use?
Several market data tools cover TikTok Shop. What matters is that you can see what sells rather than only what is published.
Should I test a competitor’s angle on my product?
Testing the underlying angle is reasonable. Copying the execution is not.
How do I compete with sellers who undercut everyone?
Not on price. On whatever justifies yours – and that justification has to appear in the content.
We run content production for Malaysian brands, including category research and positioning. Tell us the brand and the goal.