Market intelligence
Market intelligence is the information relevant to a company’s markets, gathered and analyzed specifically for the purpose of accurate and confident decision-making in determining strategy in areas such as market opportunity, market penetration strategy, and market development.[1]
Market intelligence includes the process of gathering data from the company’s external environment, whereas the Business intelligence process primarily is based on internal recorded events – such as sales, shipments and purchases. The purpose of incorporating Market Information or intelligence into the Business Intelligence process is to provide decision makers with a more “complete picture” of ongoing corporate performance in a set of given market conditions.[2]
Gathering market intelligence data
Effective market intelligence needs accurate market information that is gathered with right tools and methods. To gather information companies can conduct surveys, interviews, visit and monitor competitors outlets or gather and buy data from different sources.
Traditional interviews and surveys can be done either in-house or by using specialists agencies. As more and more markets are digitalized the market intelligence space has seen a lot of new digital tools that companies can use. There are tools such as Google Consumer Survey that enables companies to ask web users a question through Google network of online publishers. There are also specialist sites companies can buy market intelligence information and market intelligence software that companies can use to collect and monitor data from the internet.