Market Intelligence (MI) is intelligence about the trade and industry a company is operating and is unlike Business Intelligence which focuses on the company’s own processes. MI’s final aim is to help the company grow. It is important to note that many companies use MI to provide context to its Business Intelligence and therefore MI is a critical information support for any company that is operating in a competitive industry. MI is a cyclical process and can repeat based on the goals, targets and needs of the Company.
Jamil, G. L. defines “Market Intelligence” (2013): “MI is defined as a process designed to constantly produce knowledge for business sectors from dispersed data and information for strategic market positioning, as an organizational continuum that aims to answer typical decision problems faced by firms when competing in actual business environments.”
MI is generally a repeated process. Therefore, it is important that the Company continues to actively build MI inputs. India’s Godrej, a multinational, which uses MI says: “In India, we run an expert series to build digital and consumer marketing intelligence capability inputs.”
The ‘MI operation’ to be effective can be further aided by data sources, field resources, analytics, systems and processes to pull data together, technology and platforms to deliver, store, process, and distribute the info and most importantly the support of the top management.
MI is not Market Research (MR) but despite this explanation, both MI and MR largely work in a similar way and often complement each other. In 2008, DVL Smith and JH Fletcher’s overview of the MR industry showed this ‘merger’. They state: “The last few years have seen the arrival of ‘new’ market research. Gone are the days when market research posed as a quasi-academic activity that only flirted with the business decision-making process. Today, market researchers are much more focused on improving the quality of business decision-making. MI composes of internal, sectorial (external, but correlated by internal organizational configurations) and external sources to produce specific, focused knowledge to marketing processes and decision making guided to implement aggregated value positioning – specifically strategic marketing planning tasks and choices, acting as an organizational continuum.”
Often, MI is used to build a company’s marketing strategy. Good MI results in company’s growth of profits, and market share.
MI helps the Company to ‘stay current’ by assessing latest data on market forecasting, identifying growth drivers, new developments in the sector, overall industry analysis and new innovation analysis that affects the industry. Tracking and analyzing competitors is achieved by competitor analysis, their portfolio analysis and bench-markings. To study business expansion, company can use market opportunity assessments, and consumer trends.
The key four steps in MI are Collect, Analyse, Visualise and Execute.
The collection of data is based on targets and goals of the Company and therefore not all types of data may be required.
For examples, PepsiCo’s goals are summerised as: “Firstly to enable faster speed to market through the adoption of digital, tech-first, science-led tools and techniques that allow the organisation to move smarter and faster. Secondly stronger, insight-led strategies and plans that really radically elevate consumer empathy instead of us just being an organisation. Thirdly drive better returns from commercial investments.”
Once the targets and goals are defined, data on KPIs can then be collected. Defined goals help in focusing data collection for only the needed data. India’s Godrej used CMIR (Consumer and Market Insight Repository) that had a powerful search engine, organized intelligence and performance structures to fulfil their MI needs. All Godrej marketers visit the platform at least twice each quarter.
After data are collected, these data are to be analysed to identify patterns and answers with regard to what is being searched. Should the company bring in new capabilities? Visualising the data is the next step. The analysed data are visualized to gain an understanding and to make decisions. Analytics and dashboards play a key role in this. Un visualized data cannot be used to make good decisions-or any decision.
To ‘Execute’ is to take actions based on the findings. Sales and Marketing strategy should be formulated based on analysed data and the strategy can be translated to an action plan. Top leadership should take initiative so that the organization / or the specific division can follow through newly formulated strategies.
A good MI gives details of competitive environment in a unified way and also adds info on product lines, distribution channels and their performance, market share and customer interests. The MI helps grow the company and its strategy to next levels continuously adapting to the ever-changing market.
