Is Market and Competitive Intelligence the Samething? Or Are They Different?

by Scot Kim | November 12, 2019 | Submit a Comment

Is market and competitive intelligence the same thing? Can one person be able to do both market and competitive intelligence? It depends on how we define market and competitive intelligence.

Isn’t market intelligence about understanding the market’s trends and know when the downturns or upswings happen? Market intelligence is all about identifying new emerging trends and knowing when the market is declining. This is more than just total addressable market analysis, it is about anticipating when the turns happen and reacting when it happens.

Competitive intelligence is about identifying what your competitive landscape looks like, who are the potential competitors and how to displace them.

However, by understanding the difference between the two, can we conflate both disciplines into one? Or would that be mixing oil and water together creating one giant chaotic mess? I believe the answer is collaboration and working lock-step together. Market intelligence cannot be done in a vacuum. However, competitive intelligence can be isolated, however, from a big-picture perspective, without market intelligence; competitive can be misleading. Tracking one or two competitors will not help your company growth, particularly during the downturn.

However, having your market intelligence and competitive intelligence teams work together will drive results and help companies be proactive in winning when the market is shifting.

So is your competitive and market intelligence groups the same group or different but are in lock-step with each other?

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Tags: competitive-intelligence

Scot Kim
Senior Research Director
1 years at Gartner
25 years IT Industry

Scot Kim is a member of the Technology and Service Provider research organization. Mr. Kim provides research and advisory services to clients that are in need of performing competitive analysis for all departments like product management, engineering, product marketing, solutions marketing, and sales. Read Full Bio

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