© 2019 All Rights Reserved
© 2019 All Rights Reserved
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About Cookies OKWhat is Competitive Intelligence
This is an extract from a lecture we gave to MBAs, business school students & graduates at the University of Westminster in London. Watch for a taste or click here for the full lecture.
We’ve done many other presentations including Zoom / online presentations and webinars. You can view more on our Videos / Webinars page which includes a 2024 talk on how AI (artificial intelligence) can be used to support competitive intelligence.
Contact us if you would also like us to talk to your employees or students on any aspect of competitive or marketing intelligence.
AWARE was founded in 1995 by Arthur Weiss. Since 1995, the company has grown and now has an international reputation within the Competitive & Marketing Intelligence community, and are recognised as global experts.
STRATEGIC & MARKETING CONSULTANCY
COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE TRAINING & WORKSHOPS
BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT, INDUSTRY & COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE & MARKETING RESEARCH
To become the best does not mean copying what competitors are doing today, or did yesterday. You need creativity and innovation – anticipating tomorrow’s trends before they become today’s normality – keeping several steps ahead of competitors.
To outwit your competitors you need to know what they are doing.
To outmanoeuvre them, you need to know in which direction they are going.
To outflank them, you need to be faster, and better so that you can overtake them, keep in front of them, and be the best.
AWARE uses a large team of independent researchers that we call upon as and when the need arises. In this way we are easily able to conduct any size project and at the same time keep our overhead costs (and what we charge our clients) down. We can also guarantee that you will get an objective viewpoint as by using independent researchers, we can protect your identity and ensure that there are no preconceptions regarding your research needs. AWARE works closely with a number of affiliated companies in North America, mainland Europe, the Middle East and Australasia, etc.
Areas of Expertise: Marketing & Business Strategy, Marketing Planning, Financial Analysis, Online Intelligence (OSINT).
CI/MI Skills: Extensive Knowledge of Information Sources; Interviewing & Elicitation; Primary & Secondary Research; Competitive Intelligence Training & Mentoring.
Publications: Croner’s Marketing - General Editor (1996); Corporate Intelligence chapter in The Palgrave Handbook of Security, Risk and Intelligence (2017); Papers and Articles on Competitive Intelligence, Marketing, and Internet / Online Research (OSINT).
Academic Positions: Lecturer in Marketing Research / Competitive Intelligence at University of West London and DeMontfort University and Guest Lecturer at Universities of Brighton, Sheffield, Haifa...
Other: BSc (Biochemistry), MBA, CIM Chartered Marketer; International Speaker on Competitive Intelligence Issues; NLP Practitioner.
Effective competitive / marketing intelligence requires a local knowledge of culture, language (including jargon and slang), geography, information sources, the political and economic situation, customs and so on for each country in which the competitor operates.
AWARE has linked with a number of other CI and marketing consultancies, giving you access to local expertise. This way, we can provide a truly global service where your project or research is handled by in-country experts, and not remotely from several thousand miles away.
In-depth and face-to-face interviewing cannot be done remotely. It requires a local presence, with interviewers familiar with the business customs and hot-topics within the country and with an ability to speak the native language. Don’t believe anybody who tells you otherwise!
One can do research remotely using international telephone and video calls, or by flying to the foreign destination for on-the-ground research. However you risk getting poor results. A researcher unfamiliar with the local culture is likely to miss nuances resulting in incomplete intelligence or worse, a wrong interpretation of the information collected. You also end up paying for the so-called expert’s travel expenses, and learning curve while they find their way around. Working with AWARE helps you avoid this as we always work with local experts for international research.
AWARE follows a strict ethical code based on the ethical guidelines laid down by the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) association. For marketing research type projects (e.g. mystery shopping, most win-loss analysis, etc., quantitative marketing research) AWARE follows the UK Market Research Society guidelines and code of conduct.
In addition to the SCIP / MRS ethical codes, the following principles are adhered to by AWARE and its associates.
AWARE will only engage in legal and ethical approaches to obtaining competitor information and will make no attempt to obtain information that has been classified as a trade secret. (Note that public domain information is not restricted to published information, but can also include information obtained through a variety of research approaches including interviews with competitor employees and employees working for competitor clients as well as others who have direct knowledge of the competitor. Information gathered during such interviews can be used so long as it is not flagged as confidential).
AWARE will always aim to protect client interests and reputation. We will thus not engage in any practices, which could, were they discovered, bring our client’s name into disrepute. This includes, but is not limited to practices such as misrepresentation and lying, bribery, “dustbin searches”, entrapment and other approaches, which AWARE views as unethical business practices.
In interviews or other direct contacts, AWARE will disclose all relevant information for the purpose of the interview, including the interviewer identity and contact details. However AWARE will never divulge client names or the ultimate research purpose without prior authority from the client.
AWARE will protect client confidentiality and will not use information gathered or learned in one project in any other project. In this context, AWARE recommends and encourages the signing of a confidentiality agreement with clients. This can either be the client’s own agreement (if available), AWARE’s standard contract or any variation agreed by both parties. In this context, AWARE fully complies with all relevant privacy legislation in respect to personal information (Our policy complies with UK law accordingly implemented, including that required by the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Should you have any questions about data held on you as an individual, or if you have any complaint then please contact us / email us).
AWARE will always seek to avoid any conflict of interest between clients. As a result, AWARE works with only a single or limited subset of companies within an industry or industry sector and will either turn down work from competing companies of an existing client, or will ensure that the same associate does not work on both companies’ projects where any conflict of interest could arise.
This statement is made pursuant to section 54 of the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 and sets out the steps that AWARE has taken and is continuing to take to ensure that modern slavery or human trafficking is not taking place within our business or supply chain. Modern slavery encompasses slavery, servitude, human trafficking and forced labour. We have a zero tolerance approach to any form of modern slavery. We are committed to acting ethically and with integrity and transparency in all business dealings and to putting effective systems and controls in place to safeguard against any form of modern slavery taking place within the business or our supply chain.
