Competitive Intelligence and the Marketing Department Merging (Old News, Interesting Article)

Yesterday, Jon Lowder of SCIP, posted various CI related links, one of which describes the continuing trend to combine sales and marketing efforts.

The article is two years old and written from the pharmaceutical industry. However, I found the overall content interesting and recommend that you give it a read, too.

(Teaser) One of the statements that took me a bit by surprise was, “some experts argue that market research is just a subset of competitive intelligence.[CBD1] ” My personal observation is that CI usually lives side-by-side or as a subset of market research. Please, let me know if you are in a company where market research is a subset of competitive intelligence.

The article can be found HERE. I’ll give you a few paragraphs to whet your appetite:

More companies are folding Competitive Intelligence departments into Market Research. Here's why that strategy makes sense—and some hints on making the new relationship work.

That sort of insight has led to the latest trend in the world of competitive intelligence. Recognizing that competitive intelligence and market research overlap, companies across multiple industries are combining the two functions. The jury is still out on how effective this strategy will be in the long run, and on what the best way is to structure the two functions to work well together. But in the meantime, market-research groups have been turning their attention more and more toward collecting and analyzing competitive intelligence to support specific product goals. The pharmaceutical industry in particular has been integrating competitive-intelligence and market-research efforts to engender greater strategic impact from their market-research functions.

Fifty years ago, market-research groups enjoyed vast resources—large budgets and staffs to support almost any research need—as the industry began to adapt to more consumer-driven markets. Slowly, though, companies pulled back their market-research dollars and eventually shrank internal market-research groups to one or two team members.


The pharma industry witnessed some of the most drastic cuts in market-research resources. In the mid-1980s, pharmaceutical market-research teams were almost non-existent, even in the most-respected firms. Outsourcing became a quiet solution to data collection and cost savings. Most pharma companies outsourced all their market-research work during the 1980s.

The 1990s, however, saw a shift back to building internal market-research teams, which has lasted to the present. Those teams were built to support the blockbuster generation: Find a market gap, use the data to develop a first-to-market product, and brace yourself for the sales upswing. As scores of blockbuster products approach patent expiration and companies begin looking to lifecycle management teams to expand their franchises, market-research resources are settling to a more comfortable size... (for more, click here)