The article presents the systematization of approaches to assess the enterprises' level of competitiveness. The advantages and disadvantages of the most famous models for assessing the competitiveness of business entities are considered. The identified shortcomings made it possible to form a hypothesis for studying the enterprises' competitiveness, taking into account the industry factor, financial criteria and quality indicators of the enterprise. For the formation of an objective adaptation model for assessing the competitiveness of an enterprise, taking into account its industry specificity, the author's approach to assessing the competitiveness of an enterprise, taking into account industry specifics, based on the relative and qualitative indicators of the enterprise's activities, selected by the expert assessment method, is considered. For trade enterprises, groups of the most significant indicators have been formed that characterize the competitiveness in the areas of observation of the sales of a trade enterprise, its costs, financial position and financial results, for the market share of the trade enterprise, the level of prices for goods, for the level of service of the trade enterprise. The indicators characterizing the level of competitiveness of a trading enterprise are divided into relative critical indicators and a group of qualitative critical indicators, which are included in the calculation of the complex coefficient of enterprise competitiveness model based on the theory of effective competition according to the weighted average arithmetic formula. The article presents the results of approbation of the proposed methodology on the example of the “PAO Magnit” trading enterprise and its trade competitors operating in Voronezh. The obtained results of the author's methodology for assessing the competitiveness of a trading enterprise have practical significance; the proposed model can be adapted according to the criteria for selecting indicators and their quantitative indicator, which contributes to the use of this toolkit in future studies of the competitiveness of trading enterprises.