The Importance Of Competitive Intelligence

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The business environment is becoming increasingly competitive, to remain relevant companies need to formulate strategies that are informed by activities and developments in the external environment. Herring (1992) argues that successful strategies are informed by good intelligence concerning the business environment. Intelligence must describe both the current and future competitive environment. Strauss and Du Toit (2010) posit that business strategist increasingly rely on competitive intelligence to increase competitiveness. Competitive intelligence supports the needs of the organisation by gathering, interpreting and disseminating external information. It looks beyond internal business activities and it aims to integrate developments in the external environment into the business strategy.
Competitive Intelligence also supports the strategic process by acting as a sensor to determine whether the organisation is still competitive and it plays a key role towards sustaining competitive advantage. Bernhardt (2002) argues that “a well-coordinated process in which intelligence secret a fully embedded decision support element” is nothing but a guessing ritual.
Winning strategies are those that cannot be easily replicated. A superior product is not in its self a competitive advantage because a product …show more content…

Based on the observation that consumer perceptions of the two top chains, Pizza Hut and Domino’s Pizza were changing. The growing perception was that the two leading chains were providing and inferior product. Papa John’s used the opportunity to create a differentiated value proposition and adopted the slogan “better ingredients. Better Pizza”. It grew rapidly to become the third largest pizza chain in America. Its two rivals did not respond to this strategic move (perhaps it was not noticed due to lack of strategic intelligence) and they

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