Mapping the Complementary Products Force Using Market Research Techniques
This skill teaches you how to systematically identify, score, and analyze the complementary products force, the sixth force that makes the Six Forces Model a more complete strategic lens than Porter's original five.
Start by listing every product or service your customers use alongside yours. Score each complement on availability, switching cost, and value impact. Then assess whether each complement strengthens or weakens your competitive position. The output is a scored matrix that feeds directly into your Six Forces analysis and shapes partnership, bundling, and ecosystem strategy.
Outcome: You produce a scored Complements Impact Matrix that quantifies how complementary products and services affect your industry's attractiveness and your company's strategic options, enabling concrete decisions about partnerships, bundling, and ecosystem investments.
Prerequisites
- Basic understanding of Porter's Five Forces framework
- Familiarity with the Six Forces Model and why it adds a sixth force
- Access to customer usage data, survey results, or interview transcripts
- A completed or in-progress industry rivalry assessment
Overview
Every product exists inside an ecosystem. A smartphone is less valuable without apps. A game console needs games. A cloud platform needs integrations. These are complementary products, and their availability, quality, and pricing directly shape customer willingness to buy your core offering. Porter's original Five Forces framework does not account for this dynamic. The Six Forces Model corrects that gap by introducing complementary products as a distinct competitive force, making it one of the most valuable market research techniques for analyzing industries where ecosystems matter.
Mapping the complementary products force means building a structured inventory of every product and service that customers use alongside yours, then scoring each complement on dimensions that determine whether it strengthens or weakens your competitive position. This is not a casual brainstorming exercise. It requires specific customer data, structured scoring criteria, and a clear output format. When done well, the result is a Complements Impact Matrix: a prioritized table that shows which complements create the most value for customers, which ones you depend on most, and where the balance of power sits between your business and complement providers.
This skill sits between the broader data collection phase (covered in Collecting Data for a Six Forces Analysis) and the synthesis phase (covered in Synthesizing Six Forces into Strategic Recommendations). You should have at least a rough industry rivalry assessment before you begin, because understanding the competitive landscape helps you see which complements genuinely shift the balance of power versus which ones are peripheral. The artifact you produce here feeds directly into the synthesis step, where all six forces are weighted and combined into strategic recommendations.
The importance of this skill varies by industry. In technology, platform businesses, and networked markets, complements can be the single most important force. In commodity markets or standalone product categories, the force may be weak but still worth documenting. Either way, skipping this analysis leaves a blind spot that competitors who use the full Six Forces Model will exploit.
How It Works
The complementary products force works through a simple mechanism: when strong complements are available and affordable, demand for your product increases. When complements are scarce, expensive, or low quality, demand for your product decreases. This is the concept of demand-side interdependence. Unlike suppliers (who feed into your production) or substitutes (who compete for the same need), complements create value that neither product could deliver alone.
The analysis rests on three dimensions. First, availability: how many complements exist, how easy are they to find, and is supply growing or shrinking? Second, switching cost: if a customer's preferred complement disappears, how painful is the transition to an alternative? Third, value impact: how much does the complement increase or decrease the perceived value of your core product? A complement that scores high on all three dimensions is strategically critical. One that scores low across the board can be safely deprioritized.
The direction of power matters as much as the existence of the complement. When your product is the dominant partner in the relationship, you control the ecosystem and complements compete for access to your customers. Apple's relationship with most iOS app developers fits this pattern. When the complement provider holds the power, they can extract value from you or your customers. A SaaS product that depends entirely on one payment processor for its checkout flow is in a vulnerable position relative to that complement.
This is why scoring alone is insufficient. After building the initial matrix, you need to assess the power dynamic for each critical complement. Ask: who needs whom more? Could the complement provider forward-integrate and replace you? Could you backward-integrate and replace them? Are there alternative complement providers your customers could switch to? These questions transform a static inventory into a dynamic strategic map.
The Six Forces Model treats complements as a force with its own weight, not as a footnote to supplier or buyer analysis. This distinction matters because complement dynamics create strategic options (partnerships, bundling, platform plays, ecosystem investments) that the other five forces do not reveal. A company that only runs Porter's Five Forces will miss these options entirely, which is why this skill is central to modern market research techniques for technology-influenced industries.
One important nuance: complements can be both positive and negative forces. A thriving complement ecosystem raises industry attractiveness by making the overall value proposition stronger for customers. But a dominant complement provider who extracts most of the value can lower your profitability even as total market demand grows. Your matrix needs to capture both effects.
Step-by-Step
Step 1: Define your core product boundaries
Before you can identify complements, you need a crisp definition of what your product is and where its boundaries end. Write a one-sentence statement of your product's core function from the customer's perspective. ' This boundary statement prevents you from confusing features you could build with products that genuinely sit outside your offering. Everything a customer needs but your product does not provide is a potential complement.
If you are analyzing an entire industry rather than a single company, define the industry's core output instead.
Tip: If you struggle to draw the boundary, look at your pricing page. What customers pay for defines the core product. What they need but pay someone else for is complement territory.
Step 2: Build a raw complement inventory
List every product, service, platform, or resource that customers use alongside your core product. Cast a wide net. Include obvious complements (a CRM paired with an email marketing tool), infrastructure complements (hosting, payment processing), content or data complements (training courses, templates), and community complements (forums, user groups). Pull from multiple sources: customer interview transcripts, support tickets mentioning third-party tools, integration marketplace data, sales call notes, and competitor ecosystem pages.
Aim for a list of 15 to 50 items. Do not filter or score yet. The goal is completeness.
Tip: Check your analytics for outbound link clicks and referral traffic sources. These often reveal complements customers use that your team has never formally tracked.
Step 3: Categorize complements by relationship type
Group your raw list into categories that reflect how the complement relates to your core product. Common categories include: demand-side complements (products customers use together with yours to accomplish a job), supply-side complements (infrastructure or platforms your product depends on to function), channel complements (distribution partners, marketplaces, or agencies that help customers find and adopt your product), and ecosystem complements (community tools, educational content, or certification programs). Assign each complement to exactly one primary category. This categorization prevents you from treating a hosting provider the same way you treat an integration partner, since the strategic implications are different.
Tip: If a complement fits two categories, assign it to the one where the power dynamic matters most for your business.
Step 4: Score each complement on the three dimensions
Create a table with columns for complement name, category, availability (1-5), switching cost (1-5), and value impact (1-5). Availability scores how many alternative providers of that complement exist and how easy they are to find. A score of 5 means the complement is abundant and easy to access. A 1 means there is one provider or the complement is hard to find.
Switching cost scores how painful it is for customers to change from one complement provider to another. A 5 means switching is nearly impossible or extremely costly. A 1 means switching is trivial. Value impact scores how much the complement increases the overall value proposition when it is present.
A 5 means the complement is essential and dramatically improves the customer experience. A 1 means the complement is nice to have but marginal. Score independently before discussing with teammates to avoid anchoring bias.
Tip: If you lack hard data, use a quick pulse survey with 5-10 customers asking them to rank their most critical adjacent tools. Even rough customer input is better than internal guesswork.
Step 5: Calculate a composite complement score
For each complement, calculate a composite score using a weighted formula. 20). The availability dimension is inverted because low availability increases strategic risk and thus the importance of that complement. 0.
Sort your table from highest composite score to lowest. The top 5-8 complements are your strategically critical complements. These are the ones that will shape your ecosystem strategy, partnership priorities, and risk mitigation plans.
Tip: Adjust the weights if your industry has unusual characteristics. In platform businesses, value impact should be weighted even higher (0.60+). In highly regulated industries, switching cost often dominates.
Step 6: Assess the power dynamic for critical complements
For each of your top-scored complements, answer four questions. First, who needs whom more: does the complement provider depend on your customer base, or do your customers depend on the complement provider? Second, could the complement provider forward-integrate into your space? Third, could you backward-integrate and build or acquire this complement?
Fourth, how many alternative providers exist for this specific complement? Write a 2-3 sentence power assessment for each critical complement. Use a simple classification: power favors you, power is balanced, or power favors the complement provider. This step transforms static scores into strategic intelligence.
Tip: Look at the complement provider's revenue breakdown. If your industry represents less than 20% of their revenue, they have less incentive to cater to your needs, which shifts power away from you.
Step 7: Map complement trends and trajectory
For each critical complement, note whether the complement ecosystem is growing, stable, or shrinking. Check whether new complement providers are entering the market or whether consolidation is happening. Look at pricing trends for key complements over the past 2-3 years. A complement that is consolidating into fewer providers and raising prices is a growing strategic risk.
A complement category that is expanding with many new entrants and falling prices is becoming more favorable. Document these trends in a separate column of your matrix. This temporal dimension is what separates a snapshot analysis from a genuinely strategic one.
Tip: Industry analyst reports and Crunchbase funding data for complement categories are quick proxies for trend direction when you lack historical pricing data.
Step 8: Assemble the Complements Impact Matrix
Combine all the data from steps 4-7 into a single formatted artifact: the Complements Impact Matrix. Columns should include: complement name, category, availability score, switching cost score, value impact score, composite score, power dynamic (favors you / balanced / favors them), trend direction (growing / stable / shrinking), and a one-line strategic implication. Sort by composite score descending. Highlight the top 5-8 critical complements.
Add a summary paragraph at the top of the matrix stating the overall force strength: is the complementary products force strong, moderate, or weak for your industry? This summary directly feeds into the synthesis step.
Tip: Include a 'Strategic Action' column with one of four labels: Partner, Build, Monitor, or Ignore. This makes the matrix immediately actionable for leadership review.
Step 9: Validate with cross-functional stakeholders
Share the draft matrix with product, sales, customer success, and partnerships teams. Each function sees complements differently. Product knows the technical dependencies. Sales hears which complements come up in deals.
Customer success knows which complements cause churn when they fail. Partnerships knows the business terms and relationship health. Schedule a 30-minute review session. Present the top 5-8 critical complements with your scores and power assessments.
Collect corrections, missing complements, and updated scores. Finalize the matrix after incorporating feedback. The validated matrix becomes the canonical input for your Six Forces analysis.
Tip: Ask each stakeholder to independently name their top 3 complements before showing your matrix. Discrepancies between their answers and your scores reveal blind spots worth investigating.
Examples
Example: B2B SaaS project management tool
A 50-person SaaS company builds project management software for mid-market engineering teams. They have 15 official integrations and a growing partner ecosystem. The CEO wants to understand which complements drive customer retention and where strategic risk lives before allocating budget to a partnerships team.
' They build a raw inventory of 34 complements from integration marketplace data, support tickets, and 8 customer interviews. After categorizing, they identify demand-side complements like GitHub and GitLab, supply-side complements like AWS and GCP, channel complements like DevOps consulting firms, and ecosystem complements like Agile certification programs. 3) because most customers depend on the GitHub integration and there is no alternative with equivalent market share. The power dynamic assessment shows power strongly favoring GitHub, since the PM tool needs GitHub far more than GitHub needs them.
- with balanced power. The trend analysis shows that GitLab is gaining share, which could reduce GitHub's dominance within 2-3 years. The final matrix recommends: Partner deeply with GitHub (critical dependency), Monitor GitLab as a rising complement, Build a first-party Agile template library to reduce dependency on ecosystem complements, and Ignore niche DevOps consulting firms that represent less than 2% of customer acquisition.
Example: Direct-to-consumer fitness equipment brand
A DTC fitness equipment company sells smart rowing machines for $1,500. They notice that customers who also subscribe to a third-party fitness app retain at 2x the rate of customers who do not. The marketing team wants to understand the complement landscape before deciding whether to build their own app or partner.
' The raw inventory surfaces 22 complements including fitness content apps (Peloton, Apple Fitness+, Hydrow), wearable devices (Apple Watch, Whoop, Garmin), nutrition tracking apps (MyFitnessPal), foam rollers and accessories, extended warranty services, and fitness influencer communities. 5 because value impact is extremely high (customers who pair content apps retain 2x) and switching cost is moderate (3) since customers build workout history and social connections in these apps. The power dynamic strongly favors the content app providers: they have millions of users across equipment brands, while the rowing company represents a tiny fraction of their user base. 2) with balanced power since customers own the device independently.
The trend analysis reveals that major fitness content platforms are increasingly building exclusive hardware partnerships, which could eventually lock out independent equipment makers. The strategic recommendation is to build a proprietary content experience (backward integration) for the core rowing use case while maintaining open integration with dominant platforms. This reduces the existential risk of complement providers choosing competitors as exclusive partners.
Example: Enterprise cloud security platform
A 200-person enterprise security company sells a cloud workload protection platform. They operate in a market with intense complement dependencies on cloud providers, SIEM tools, and IT service management platforms. The VP of Strategy needs the complement analysis to inform a platform versus point-solution positioning decision.
' The inventory yields 41 complements spanning cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP), SIEM platforms (Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, Elastic), ITSM tools (ServiceNow, Jira Service Management), CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI), identity providers (Okta, Azure AD), and compliance frameworks (SOC 2 audit services, GRC platforms). 8) because they are essential infrastructure with extremely high switching costs. However, the power dynamic analysis shows a nuanced picture: while individual cloud providers hold enormous power, the security company's multi-cloud support actually gives it leverage since customers value a tool that works across all three providers. 0) with balanced power because security data flows both directions.
The trend analysis shows cloud providers building more native security features, which could evolve the complement relationship into a competitive one. The matrix recommends: maintain parity support across all three cloud providers to preserve the multi-cloud positioning advantage, deepen SIEM integrations as a retention driver, build native ServiceNow integration (currently missing, cited in 30% of lost deals), and monitor cloud-native security features as a potential substitute threat that should be escalated to the substitutes assessment.
Example: Small local bakery exploring online ordering
A family-owned bakery with two locations is adding online ordering. They want to understand what complementary products and services affect customer experience and loyalty in the local bakery market before investing in technology. Budget is limited, and the owner has no formal strategy training.
' Working alone with a simple spreadsheet, she lists 18 complements: delivery services (DoorDash, Uber Eats, local courier), coffee (both her own and nearby coffee shops), catering services, event venues that recommend bakeries, gift card platforms, packaging suppliers, payment processing (Square, Toast), social media platforms for marketing, local wedding planners, food photography services, review platforms (Yelp, Google Reviews), and loyalty program software. 2) with extremely high value impact for online orders but with the power dynamic heavily favoring the platforms since they control customer relationships and charge 20-30% commissions. 8) because positive reviews drive significant foot traffic, and the power dynamic is mixed since the bakery cannot control reviews but can influence them through service quality. 1) but represent high-value orders.
The final matrix, just 12 rows after removing peripheral items, recommends: build direct online ordering to reduce delivery platform dependency, invest in review management as the highest-ROI complement strategy, and formalize referral relationships with the three wedding planners who already send business. The entire exercise takes 3 hours with no paid tools.
Best Practices
Score each dimension independently and in writing before discussing with teammates. Group scoring sessions create anchoring bias where the first person's scores compress the range. Independent scoring followed by discussion and reconciliation produces more accurate and defensible results.
Revisit the complement matrix quarterly, not just annually. Complement ecosystems shift faster than industry rivalry or supplier power. A new entrant raising funding, a key complement provider being acquired, or a platform changing its API terms can flip the power dynamic in weeks. Stale complement data leads to strategic surprises.
Distinguish between complements that affect your entire industry versus those specific to your company. A complement that benefits all players in the industry raises overall market attractiveness but does not give you a competitive advantage. A complement relationship that is exclusive to your company, through a partnership or integration, is a genuine differentiator. Flag both types in your matrix.
Weight customer data over internal assumptions. Your product team may believe a certain integration is critical, but if customers rarely mention it in interviews or usage data shows low adoption, the complement is less strategically important than it appears. Always ground scores in observable customer behavior when data is available.
Document the reasoning behind each score, not just the number. A score of 4 on switching cost means nothing six months later if nobody remembers why. Write a one-sentence justification for each score so the matrix can be updated and challenged without starting from scratch.
Map complements from the customer's workflow, not from your product's feature list. Customers do not think in terms of your product categories. They think in terms of jobs to be done. Start with the customer's end-to-end workflow and identify every tool, service, or resource they touch along the way. This approach catches complements that a product-centric view would miss entirely.
Separate the overall force assessment from individual complement assessments. The complementary products force can be strong for your industry even if no single complement scores above a 3, because the cumulative effect of many moderate complements shapes customer behavior. Conversely, the force can hinge entirely on one critical complement. State both the overall force strength and the concentration of that strength.
Common Mistakes
Confusing complements with features or substitutes
Correction
A complement is a separate product or service that increases the value of your offering when used together. A feature is something you build into your own product. A substitute replaces your product entirely. If you are listing items your product already includes, those are features, not complements.
If you are listing products customers might use instead of yours, those are substitutes. The test is simple: does the item make your product more valuable when both are present? If yes, it is a complement. If it replaces yours, it is a substitute.
Misclassification leads to strategic actions aimed at the wrong target.
Only listing technology integrations as complements
Correction
Integration partnerships are the most visible complements, but they are not the only ones. Training and certification programs, consulting services, community forums, content libraries, hardware accessories, and even regulatory frameworks can function as complements. A narrow focus on API integrations causes teams to miss service-layer and content-layer complements that may have higher value impact scores. Review your raw inventory and check whether at least three of the four complement categories (demand-side, supply-side, channel, ecosystem) are represented.
Treating all complements as equally important
Correction
Teams often produce a flat list of 30+ complements and present them without prioritization. This is a data dump, not an analysis. The composite scoring step exists specifically to separate the 5-8 strategically critical complements from the 20+ that can be monitored passively. If your matrix does not have a clear top tier and a clear bottom tier, your scoring criteria may be too uniform.
Check whether you are actually differentiating on switching cost and value impact, which are the dimensions that create the biggest spread between critical and peripheral complements.
Ignoring the power dynamic and stopping at scores
Correction
A complement with a high value impact score is important, but the strategic implications depend entirely on who controls that complement. If you have a dominant complement relationship where multiple providers compete for your ecosystem, a high score is good news since it means the complement adds value and you have leverage. If one complement provider holds all the power, the same high score represents a critical dependency and strategic vulnerability. Teams that skip the power assessment in Step 6 end up with a matrix that describes the landscape but does not reveal where the risks and opportunities actually sit.
Running the analysis without customer input
Correction
Internal teams tend to overweight complements that are visible to product and engineering while underweighting complements that customers rely on but never mention in feature requests. The most common version of this mistake is scoring based on integration usage data alone, which misses offline complements like consulting services, training programs, or community resources. Even five customer interviews asking 'what other tools and services do you need to get full value from our product?' will surface complements your internal team never considered. Ground your inventory and scores in customer reality.
Performing the analysis once and treating it as permanent
Correction
Complement ecosystems are among the fastest-changing forces in most industries. A key complement provider can be acquired, change pricing, deprecate an API, or pivot to a different market in a single quarter. Teams that treat the Complements Impact Matrix as a one-time exercise get blindsided by changes that were visible in trend data. Build a lightweight quarterly review into your planning cadence.
Focus the review on your top 5-8 critical complements: have any scores changed by more than one point? Has the power dynamic shifted? Has a new entrant appeared in a critical complement category?
Other Skills in This Method
Selecting Tools and Templates for Six Forces Research
How to choose and configure market research tools, visualization software, and scoring templates to streamline and standardize a Six Forces analysis.
Collecting Data for a Six Forces Analysis
How to design and execute a structured market research process—including surveys, secondary sources, and industry databases—to populate each of the six forces with reliable data.
Synthesizing Six Forces into Strategic Recommendations
How to combine findings from all six forces into a cohesive strategic positioning map that guides investment, partnership, and competitive strategy decisions.
Conducting an Industry Rivalry Assessment
How to systematically research and evaluate the intensity of competitive rivalry within an industry using both qualitative and quantitative market research methods.
Evaluating Buyer and Supplier Bargaining Power
How to gather primary and secondary market research data to assess the bargaining power of buyers and suppliers as distinct forces shaping industry profitability.
Assessing Threats of New Entrants and Substitutes
How to use consumer market research and competitive intelligence to quantify the threats posed by new market entrants and substitute products or services.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I identify complements that customers use but never mention?
Ask indirect questions in customer interviews rather than asking directly about complements. Questions like 'Walk me through your entire workflow from the moment you decide to do X until you have the result' surface adjacent tools and services naturally. Also review support tickets for mentions of third-party products, check outbound link clicks in your analytics, and look at what integrations competitors offer that you do not. Customers rarely volunteer complement information unprompted because they think of their workflow as one continuous process, not as separate tools.
How long should the complement mapping process take for a first attempt?
For a small team or solo operator analyzing a well-understood market, expect 2-3 hours to produce a usable matrix. For a larger organization analyzing a complex, multi-sided market with many stakeholders to consult, budget 4-6 hours spread across two sessions: one for inventory and scoring, one for power dynamics and validation. The validation step with cross-functional stakeholders adds another 30-60 minutes. Do not try to do it in one marathon session because fatigue degrades scoring quality in the later items.
Should I map complements before or after analyzing the other five forces?
Map complements after you have at least a draft of [industry rivalry](/skills/conducting-industry-rivalry-assessment) and [buyer/supplier power](/skills/evaluating-buyer-and-supplier-power), but before the final synthesis. Understanding rivalry tells you which complements matter competitively. Understanding buyer and supplier power prevents you from misclassifying a supplier as a complement. However, complement analysis sometimes reveals that what you thought was a substitute is actually a complement, or vice versa, so be prepared to update your earlier force assessments.
What if my industry has very few or no obvious complementary products?
Every industry has some complements, but the force strength varies dramatically. Commodity industries like raw materials may have minimal complement effects, while platform businesses may be defined by them. If your initial inventory surfaces fewer than 5 complements, broaden your definition. Consider channel complements (how customers find you), financing or insurance products bundled with purchases, training and education, and post-purchase services. If the force is genuinely weak after thorough analysis, document that finding. A weak force is still a finding that shapes your strategic picture. Do not inflate the analysis to make complements seem more important than they are.
How do I handle complements that are also potential competitors?
This is common, especially in technology markets where platform boundaries shift. A cloud provider is a complement (hosting your product) and a potential competitor (building competing features). Document these dual-role entities in your matrix with a flag or note. Score them as complements based on their current role, but add a risk note about competitive potential. Then cross-reference with your [substitutes and new entrants analysis](/skills/assessing-threat-of-new-entrants-and-substitutes). The same entity may appear in two force analyses, which is correct. The strategic recommendation should address both the partnership opportunity and the competitive risk.
Why does my complement matrix keep producing similar scores across all items?
Score compression usually happens for one of three reasons. First, the team scored collaboratively rather than independently, which causes anchoring around the first scores proposed. Fix this by having each person score alone in writing first. Second, the scoring criteria are too vague, so everyone defaults to 3s. , switching cost of 5 means 'would take 6+ months and cost significant money to switch'). Third, the inventory includes too many peripheral items that genuinely do cluster around moderate scores. Fix this by pre-filtering obvious low-importance items before scoring and focusing scoring effort on the top 15-20 complements.
Can I use this analysis for market research techniques beyond the Six Forces Model?
Yes. The Complements Impact Matrix is useful independently of the Six Forces framework. Product teams use it to prioritize integration roadmaps. Partnership teams use it to identify and rank potential partners. Investor pitch decks use it to illustrate ecosystem defensibility. M&A teams use it to identify acquisition targets in complement categories where the power dynamic is unfavorable. The structured scoring approach transfers to any scenario where you need to evaluate and prioritize external dependencies or partnership opportunities.