Data, data everywhere but no competitive intelligence in sight describes many of the competitive intelligence systems in place today. Competitive intelligence - when used to its fullest with adequate knowledge dissemination - can actually help overcome some of the problems of information management inherent in todays multi-division and global corporations. The corporate intranet appears to be the ideal way to successfully disseminate competitive intelligence. Intranets provide a powerful information technology that provide many benefits to competitive intelligence departments including: cost effectiveness; simplified system integration and growth; and enhanced security.
The philosophy behind the Delphi Technique for forecasting is to gather a group of experts all of whom have different perspectives on the issue being studied. Through a series of iterative surveys and discussions the learning of the group is supposed to simulate the learning of the marketplace or a society over time. Experience has found Delphi processes to be highly accurate in prediction of future market structure and events. However the process can require six months of time and a quarter of a million dollars of budget. This paper discusses the use of the Internet for conducting a Delphi process which reduces the amount of time required from twenty to twenty-six weeks in a traditional Delphi process to a mere five weeks for a Delphi process conducted via the Internet. Cost savings are also significant.
The Internet is the newest methodology or mousetrap available to market researchers. Researchers disagree on how ready we are as an industry to move to on-line data collection. Questions abound about how representative the respondents we reach via the Internet are. Do we really know who our Internet respondents are? As a first step in answering these questions we conducted a side-by-side study among high-tech professionals. Respondents were randomly assigned to be interviewed via the phone or were asked to complete the survey via the Internet. Data collected by the two methods were compared and statistically tested for differences.
This paper has two aims: first, to send out a wake up call to us market researchers as a profession. If we don't want to fade into oblivion like the buggy whip,the time to begin a fundamental change of market research is now. And, secondly, to discuss some ways we might get there - to the future, that is. Traditionally, market research has provided clear, reliable pictures of today and yesterday. Our tools for predicting the future have been primarily limited to demand curves, price elasticity and data input to models. These tools have served us well for the last fifty years. But they are inadequate for the business environment that we will soon be facing. Our focus as an industry must realign our time frames. Tomorrow is the name of the game, tomorrow.