The authors study in detail the short-range order at low temperature in a one-dimensional Ising model with competing interactions by studying various staggered susceptibilities. From this they get a 'phase diagram' which divides regions of various dominant short-range orders. This phase diagram is shown to resemble qualitatively the low-temperature phase diagram of the anisotropic next-nearest-neighbour interaction Ising (ANNNI) model in higher dimensions. They argue that this method of studying a corresponding one-dimensional problem may be useful to understand the phase structure of complex higher-dimensional systems.