Marketing Intelligence

Marketing intelligence (MI):- MI is the everyday information relevant to a company’s markets, gathered and analyzed specifically for the purpose of accurate and confident decision-making in determining market opportunity, market penetration strategy, and market development metrics. Marketing intelligence is necessary when entering a foreign market.

Marketing intelligence determines the intelligence needed, collects it by searching environment and delivers it to marketing managers who need it. 

In order to collect marketing intelligence, marketing managers must be in constant touch with relevant books, newspapers and trade publications. They must talk to various stakeholders like customers, distributors and suppliers.In addition to this they must also monitor social media and carry out online discussions. 

Organizationally, marketing intelligence can be the name of the department that performs both the market intelligence and competitor analysis roles

Steps to be taken by a Company to improve its Marketing Intelligence

(1) Train and Motivate Sales Force: A company's sales force can be an excellent source of information about the current trends in the market. They are the "intelligence gatherers" for the company. The acquired facts can be regarding the company's market offerings, whether any improvements are required or not or is there any opportunity for new products, etc. It can also provide credible source to know about competitor activities, consumers, distributors and retailers.

(2) Motivate Distributors, retailers, and other intermediaries to pass along important intelligence: Specialists are hired by companies to gather marketing intelligence. In order to measure the quality of production, the way the employees are behaving with customers, quality of facilities being provided; retailers and service providers send mystery shoppers. Firms can also assess the quality of customer experience with the shops with the use of mystery shoppers.

(3) Network...