Best Practices - Competitor Field and Sublist in Opportunities/Customers

What best practices are being used to identify competitors in Opportunities and how does this assist in the selling process?

I have been researching the Competitor field (on the Opportunity); I have added the NetSuite recommended mirrored custom field onto the Customer.  Now I have a report Opportunity Lost and a Saved Search Opportunities Lost to a Competitor.  From further research I see that I have the option to use additional fields i.e. Strengths, Weaknesses, and products, however I am not able to find any clear information in SuiteAnswers as to how the Competitors are used.

My next step is to log into training pass to try and find some information, but I wanted to reach out to the community to see if we could start a discussion.