Market intelligence
[1] It is a subtype of competitive intelligence (CI), which is data and information gathered by companies that provide continuous insight into market trends such as competitors' and customers' values and preferences.
[4] The gathering of MI data is sorted into many different categories, including, but not limited to, qualitative, quantitative, formal, informal, published, and unpublished.
[1] Issues that MI can bring is through acquiring data and information through illegal or unethical ways, it can lead to financial loss and government regulatory failures.
[3] Such data and information can be gathered from external sources, such as other organisations and their market strategies, research institutes and business reports.
[3] It is estimated that 70% to 80% of intelligence resides within organizations employees or, internal MI network, as they are the team who gains information's when interacting with suppliers, customers and other industry contacts.
[4] It involves the use of translating the clean data using organizational rules, modelling, logic and analysis to produce readable information, reports and spreadsheets that allows the organization to gain specified knowledge.
It involves the sharing, delivering and transmission of information gained from the processing step to figures in the organization who will apply it accordingly to the market strategy.
[1] An intelligence organization element is made up of external and internal factors that allows for a continuous MI process.
[8] It involves using search engines and corporate web sites to see competitor's strategies, identifying business trends through reputable publications and existing customer clientele.
OSINT is defined as the scanning, finding, gathering, exploitation, validation, analysis, and sharing with intelligence-seeking clients of publicly available print and digital/electronic data from unclassified, non-secret, and grey literature.
[3] There are issues that arises in the process of acquiring MI data and information and the implementation of an organizations marketing strategy.
Organizations can collect data for MI illegally or unethically to try to gain competitive advantages; this is known as industrial espionage.
[28] An example of illegal MI collection practice is when British Airways breached the Data Protect Act 1984 through accessing Virgin's confidential flight details.
[30] If data quality is not managed properly, it can result in financial losses, inefficient implementation of MI strategies and failure to comply with government regulations.
[31] A reason for financial loss is due operational costs, as there is an increase in resources and time spent to identify and fix the dirty data.
[1] The benefits of a successful MI process can be sectioned into three categories, better and faster decisions, time and cost savings and organizational learning and new ideas, however, overall, it can improve profitability and the competitiveness of an organization.
