Market Intelligence Vs Competitive Intelligence

In business, we frequently come across various phrases that appear to be similar but are actually quite distinct. Before we get into their differences, let us get to the core point of the resemblance between competitive intelligence and market intelligence. Both of these sorts of intelligence help businesses in gaining a stronger presence in the market and need a significant amount of accurate research to be successful.

So, how do you tell the difference between the two? Here’s how it works: Competitive intelligence is a strategic study that businesses utilize to gain a better understanding of their industry and monitor their competitors’ actions. 

Market intelligence, on the other hand, is a larger term that refers to a company’s study on the external market it wants to penetrate, as well as its rivals and customers. 

What is intelligence? 

In the business world, you often will come up with the terms business intelligence, corporate intelligence, strategic intelligence, even foresight, corporate foresight or even the topic early warning is part of competitive intelligence. 

What is important to understand is intelligence is basically any kind of activity where you are preparing a decision-maker to act based on a kind of report or output that you provide them so that he can act upon this kind of recommendation. It’s a very broad definition of what intelligence is, but it’s very essential. 

Why should we do market intelligence and competitive intelligence?

This is the basic concept of marketing, and if you look at the magic triangle that consists of your company, your clients, and of the competition.

It’s clear why having a look at the competition makes absolute sense in a business context. If you only have a view on your own company and the strengths and weaknesses of a company and on your clients and are not taking into account what your competitors are offering and how your clients are perceiving this competitive offering, then you’re only seeing parts of the whole market and are missing out a lot of information. 

Therefore, it’s very crucial to also have an eye on the competition in ongoing monitoring of the competition. 

Market intelligence and competitive intelligence can help your company understand and navigate the competitive landscape by researching such things as competitors’ regulatory environment and industry trends. They can help you plot a course that will ensure you reach your business objective.

What’s the difference between Market Intelligence Vs Competitive Intelligence?

Market intelligence benefits are used to guide more long-term strategies, whereas competitor intelligence is usually more tactical and short-term. But that’s not all; there are additional elements that distinguish the two, what are they?

Data Collected

As previously said, market intelligence provides businesses with a more comprehensive image of the market and their consumers. This implies it is more client-centric, which helps businesses better understand their customers and general consumer purchasing behaviour. Whereas, competitive intelligence is more business-oriented because it includes information on a company’s competitors as well as their business plans.

More Detailed Data Collection

In market intelligence, customers are the focus; as a result, the data obtained in this sort of business intelligence includes demographics, demography, consumption, and demand, as well as economic and social statistics about individuals. Competitive intelligence helps businesses in determining competitors’ strategy, strengths and weaknesses, customer base, and how their actions affect your company, among other things.

Determining the action plan

While the end goal of each of these methods is to decrease business risk and improve the company’s performance, the data focus of each is substantially different. As a result, its use in a company’s formal business plan differs. Businesses use market intelligence to enhance their present product offers and produce new and creative products, which leads to increased client loyalty.

Other businesses use competitive intelligence to devise particular strategies for overcoming competition from multiple competitors in the market. Companies may develop various countermeasures for each competitor using competitor intelligence and can plan different business plans and tactics for each competitor.

Information Collection Source

Information can come from a number of places, including publishing reports, financial statements, websites, and articles. This kind of research is often referred to as secondary research, including anything that you can find on Google or at your Public Library. 

In competitive intelligence for a more detailed look at competitors or industries requires primary research. Primary research is information that is gathered directly from the people who have the information. Probably intelligence comes from conversations with competitors, former employees, vendors, and customers. The benefit of primary research is that it provides the most detailed and comprehensive view of the competitive landscape.

Marketing intelligence can be gathered from the outside and from the company’s own personnel such as executives, purchasing officers, sales staff, but often these people can be too busy to pass on information. Companies need to stress to their employees the importance of intelligence gathering, train them and urge them to report intelligence back to the company head office. 

Term of strategy.

Market Intelligence benefits are immense for developing a more exact picture of your upcoming strategies. It gathers data on external influences that affect your business in order to guide more long-term planning. You may take a farsighted strategy by matching your marketing efforts to your chosen target audience group by learning about their preferences.

Customer retention may become the most important statistic for sales growth, hence efficient usage of Market Intelligence may help boost sales growth. Your company will save money by maintaining existing clients rather than attracting new ones if you increase customer-centricity. Understanding who your customers are and collaborating with them to better your own offerings is a good technique for increasing customer retention.

Because competitive intelligence projects are frequently started to identify current dangers and possibilities by looking at how customers talk about your brand in comparison to your competitors, this is where conversations, views, and discussion boards are cited as valuable sources of qualitative data.

Companies prefer to rely on competitive intelligence for the short-to-medium-term future since it collects current time data, with the likely objective of regaining market share or improving bottom-line results.

Conclusion

Whether you’re looking for long-term or short-term solutions of market intelligence vs competitive intelligence, you should think about how and where you acquire the most useful data. If you believe that market intelligence may be utilized to answer specific questions about the present market environment, or that competitive intelligence can be used to discover important differentiators, social listening might be the practical choice for your research needs.