Dogosh

If we being paid attention to each supermarket visitor or hypermarket like Macro, Carrefour, Hero or the other supermarket, always had the certain person who only looked around the product or just recorded the price of certain products. Who were they? Partly was the envoy from the producer of the certain brand that wanted to know the price of the competitor's product and some of course from the peer retail. In the industry retail, the price had the important role. They must monitor continually every day the development of prices of the product that was sold by retail of their competitor.
Indeed, in the simple form , market intelligence could be carried out by means of observation. The cheap method and often could give useful information. I was convinced, market intelligence in this form, quite often was carried out by the company anywhere. There were a small part that have had systematic planning like the big players retail and most only did in the form of ad hoc or was carried out when having the requirement.
Telkomsel, Satelindo or Excelcomindo could do market intelligence in the form of observation to know the strength of the signal in the certain area. Be enough to buying the competitor's product and afterwards observation to each area or the area that was wanted and saw as good the level coverage and the strength of his signal. Banks in Malaysia were able easily to carry out observation to know the other surplus and at the same time the level of the service that was given of the bank's facilities.
The technique market intelligence through observation that over limit sophisticated had been carried out by Avon in America at the beginning of 1990. They gathered of wastes that were thrown away by the company of Mary Kay by means of employing the special person of a kind of detective. Each memo, the note and the report of Mary Kay that was exiled in the waste was researched repeated and when still possibly in-reconstruction. The Avon wanted to learn the movements of Mary Kay that was reported will acquire this company. This method its very effective and did not violate the law but from the aspect of ethics definitely was difficult to be accepted.
This that often became the problem with observation that is the problem of ethics. The Avon was quite proven did not violate the law as the court concluded but clear violated of business ethics. That was the reason, company of the world like IBM and P&G that have had the Market Intelligence division that advanced, always paid attention to the problem of ethics in the data collection.
The other cheap method of getting information was with doing interview to the competitor's customers or with supplier. To know how big the turnover from the soy sauce factory, relative the easy work if we could get information from their bottle supplier . To know how big the turnover from the brand of peppermints or the certain biscuit, could be received when we got information from their package supplier.
The other method of the data collection that still was categorised in Market Intelligence was with the method that was mentioned scanning market environment. For the small scale company where the use of his information technology was still being left behind, this method is usually carried out with the clipping. Definitely, too old , this method not efficient to remembered the increase in the number of datas its extraordinary from the year to year.
They who were serious with the Market Intelligence development very grateful with the existence of the development of the internet. The work scanning market environment this could be carried out quickly and the information was global. Nevertheless, without the use of adequate information technology, being difficult to make the data and information that were received could be pattern well. Therefore, the company will fail to transform this information to some knowledge that could be used by the decision-maker. Without the data was bad matter, but too many datas were also not maximal so as to be able to not make use of results, the outcome was equally bad also.
Today, has begun many software that could help scanning market environment. We only necessary typed "key word" that we wanted , and all the article could we took in the condition was compiled. Software this would increasingly very useful if in the future most contents could be from the mass media accessed in a manner online.
Be sure, Market Intelligence is one of the collector's components of the data and very important information today. At the beginning of 1980, Fuji Film succeeded in preceding Kodak when introducing the one used camera in the Japanese market, in fact Kodak beforehand patented the similar product. Learn from this, afterwards Kodak gathered information through their division market intelligence. When Fuji wanted to launch this camera in America, Kodak finally could precede only one day before Fuji did event their launching . As a result could be suspected that the Kodak product got the address that was far more better in the American market.
The real challenge in developing Market Intelligence division anywhere was resistance from the each of CEO. This could happen because inattentive and his interest, did not know must begin from where or did not see as something that was useful. It is not surprising, as part of big the Market Intelligence activity was only carried out when having the requirement. In the long term, this activity did not have the strategic meaning and did not give the contribution in found knowledge just that was needed by the decision-makers.