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Market intelligence (MI), according to Cornish, “the process of acquiring and analyzing information in order to understand the market (both existing and potential customers); to determine the current and future needs and preferences, attitudes and behavior of the market; and to assess changes in the business environment that may affect the size and nature of the market in the future.” (“Product”, 1997, p147).

This figure shows how the interaction between variables from producers, communication channels, and consumers vary the effectiveness of market intelligence which affects the performance of the sales of a new product. The product is central in a circle because it helps to direct what information is gathered and how.

A software company will likely know more about its market and have more success in its product selection when it collects more different categories of market intelligence which cover both tacit and explicit knowledge. MI is generated from both systematic methods of market research and software testing by users as well as recorded tacit process in daily operations. It includes information from customer analysis and industry analysis as well as general market conditions. The seven most used activities for collecting MI in product software industries are:

• product testing
• industry intelligence
• sales/service
• trade shows
• channels
• qualitative methods (small “focus groups” and personal interview)
• aggregate data

MI’s main use is to identify successful new product developments early in the process to create company growth and maximize revenues by finding a balance between costs and prices of products. By using this knowledge about the external environment, software companies can successfully innovate to stay ahead of the competition. MI is critical for helping with the new product development stage of the product lifecycle, which is crucial for product software.

This figure represents a meta-data process model for market intelligence with concepts in boxes with properties and arrows representing associations. Activities in the process can be for acquiring knowledge, such as listed previous, or (disjoint) for analyzing the previous gathered knowledge. It is sent between the different activities with data flow that can contain quantitative and/or qualitative explicit knowledge. After an analysis activity, an explicit data flow is sent to form market intelligence for usage in decision-making.

[edit] References

• Cornish, S. L. “Product Innovation and the Spatial Dynamics of Market Intelligence: Does Proximity to Markets Matter?” Economic Geography. Volume: 73, Issue 2 (April 1997), pp: 143-165.
• Cornish, S.L. “Strategies for the acquisition of market intelligences and implications for the transferability of information inputs.” Annals of the Association of American Geographer, Volume: 87, Issue: 3 (September 1997), pp: 451-470

[edit] See also

market research market research is the process about designing, collecting, implementing and reporting the facts in a marketing situation. market intelligence