The Marketing Intelligence System

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Marketing Intelligence
The Marketing Intelligence System
A marketing intelligence system is a set of procedures and sources that managers use to obtain everyday information about developments in the marketing environment. The internal records system supplies results data, but the marketing intelligence system supplies happenings data. Marketing managers collect marketing intelligence by reading books, newspapers, and trade publications; talking to customers, suppliers, distributors, and other company managers; and monitoring online social media.

Before the Internet, sometimes you just had to go out in the field and watch the competition. Describing how he learned about a rival’s drilling activity, oil and gas entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens recalls, “We would have someone who would watch [the rival’s] drilling floor from a half mile away with field glasses. Our competitor didn’t like it but there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Our spotters would watch the joints and drill pipe. They would count them; each [drill] joint was 30 feet long. By adding up all the joints, you would be able to tally the depth of the well.” Pickens knew that the deeper the well, the more costly for his rival to get the oil or gas up to the surface, information that gave him an immediate competitive advantage.

Marketing intelligence gathering must be legal and ethical. The private intelligence firm Diligence paid
auditor KPMG a fine of $1.7 million after its cofounder posed as a British intelligence officer and convinced a member of the audit team to share confidential documents about a Bermuda-based investment firm for a Russian conglomerate
 

Motivate distributors, retailers, and other intermediaries to pass along important intelligence. 

Marketing intermediaries are often closer to the customer and competition and can offer helpful insights. Combining data from its retailers Safeway, Kroger, and Walmart with its own qualitative insights, food producer ConAgra learned that many mothers switched to time-saving meals and snacks when school started. It launched its “Seasons of Mom” campaign to help grocers adjust to seasonal shifts in household needs

Hire external experts to collect intelligence. 

Many companies hire specialists to gather marketing intelligence. SavOn Convenience Stores, an enterprise of the Oneida Indian Nation, conducts  “mystery shopper” visits a month across its 13 stores. Stores are graded on employee responsiveness to customers, product quality, food freshness, restroom cleanliness, and stock levels. SavOn gives awards to winning stores.

Set up a customer advisory panel. 

Members of advisory panels might include the company’s largest, most outspoken, most sophisticated, or most representative customers. GlaxoSmithKline sponsored an online community devoted to weight loss, where marketers felt they learned far more than they could have gleaned from focus groups on topics from packaging its weight-loss pill to where to place in-store marketing

Take advantage of government-related data resources. 

The U.S. Census Bureau provides an in-depth look at the population swings, demographic groups, regional migrations, and changing family structure of the more than 311,591,917 people in the United States. Census marketer Nielsen Claritas SiteReports cross-references census figures with consumer surveys and its own grassroots research for clients such as The Weather Channel, BMW, and Sovereign Bank. SiteReports offers more than 50 reports and maps that help companies analyze markets, select site locations, and target customers effectively

Purchase information from outside research firms and vendors. Well-known data suppliers like A.C. Nielsen
Company and Information Resources Inc. collect information about product sales and consumer exposure to
media; they also gather consumer-panel data. Attensity offers a suite of products to monitor customer conversations from a variety of social, online, and internal sources.15 NPD conducts its Kitchen Audit study every three years to determine what food ingredients U.S. households have on hand and what appliances, cookware, and utensils they own and to assess usage and sources of recipes

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