Research about your competitors should be focused on how to improve your business and not fester unhealthy rivalry. Researching about your competitors can give you insight into what you are doing wrong or right. It can also be an avenue to learn about trends in the industry if you are still new to the terrain.
Social listening tools can be very helpful in this regard as they help you retrieve data about conversations around your industry on social media. This will allow you to know how to evolve with your market. Companies such as Hubspot provide such tools for businesses online. You can also become a customer of your competitors or get staff to act as one. This will provide you with first-hand information about how they treat their customers and how this can be applied to your own business.
Don’t forget that your business is a unique venture and that ‘copycatting’ is not attractive.