1. How far should people in a business firm go in gathering competitive intelligence?

Where
do you draw the line?

Considering my insight, a business should study the thing which their rivals are doing and
endeavor to create something else to stand out from them. When creating a new product or service,
the entity must continue to monitor the market and coordinate and implement any necessary
progressions or alterations. In addition, business should draw a line when it comes to interacting with
employees solely for the purpose of getting information from competitors. Engaging in an illegal
practice to obtain this information, disseminating misleading information to consumers, and
advertisements containing false information are also part of the reason for drawing a line.

2. Evaluate each of the following approaches that a person could use to gather information
about competitors. For each approach, mark your feeling about its appropriateness:
1 (definitely not appropriate); 2 (probably not appropriate); 3 (undecided); 4 (probably appropriate); 5
(definitely appropriate)

The business firm should try to get useful information about competitors by:
5 Carefully studying trade journals
1 Wiretapping the telephones of competitors
4 Posing as a potential customer to competitors
3 Getting loyal customers to put out a phony “request for proposal” soliciting competitors’ bids
4 Buying competitors’ products and taking them apart
4 Hiring management consultants who have worked for competitors
2 Rewarding competitors’ employees for useful “tips”
2 Questioning competitors’ customers and/or suppliers
1 Buying and analyzing competitors’ garbage
1 Advertising and interviewing for nonexistent jobs
5 Taking public tours of competitors’ facilities
1 Releasing false information about the company in order to confuse competitors
4 Questioning competitors’ technical people at trade shows and conferences
5 Hiring key people away from competitors
4 Analyzing competitors’ labor union contracts
1 Having employees date persons who work for competitors
5 Studying aerial photographs of competitors’ facilities

3. What does SCIP say about these approaches?

As indicated in the website of Society for Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP), a

worldwide non-profit membership organization association for everybody involved in making and
handling business information, the approaches referenced above is to morally assemble, examine
and deal with the external information that aids in the preparation and fostering the organization to
recognize its competitive gaps among the industry to make a superior strategy. In this way regarding
the SCIP data, gathering information about an organization's significant rivals as it would explore an
assortment of sources to accumulate understanding with regards to what the opposition is doing and
what they may be intending to do next may be considered as a competitive intelligence which alludes
to the capacity to gather, investigate, and utilize information gathered on competitors, clients, and
other market factors that add to a business' upper hand.
REFERENCES:

https://www.scip.org/