Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning pdf ebook

Figure 5.10 
Sources of 
competitor 
information
What they say about
themselves
What others say
about them
Advertisements (media and
message)
Recruitment ads
Promotional material
Technical reports
Press releases
Newspapers and magazines
Trade sources
Customers

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OBTAINING AND DISSEMINATING COMPETITIVE INFORMATION
have moved from one company to another. However, a company would be naive if it did 
not thoroughly debrief competitors’ former employees if they did join the company. For 
instance, for a long time Procter & Gamble and Unilever in the UK have provided excel-
lent and highly regarded training grounds for marketing people. When their employees 
move, they carry with them a great deal of useful information on their previous employers’ 
products, methods and strategies. Many such large employers are very aware of this and 
often request that people who are leaving must clear their desks and leave within minutes 
once their intention to move is known. Even if competitors’ employees are not eventually 
recruited, the interviewing process itself can often provide useful information, particularly 
since the person being interviewed may be eager to impress the potential employer.
Surveillance is widely used within counter-espionage, but is less common as a means 
of gathering competitive business information. Some of the methods used can be quite 
innocuous, such as monitoring competitors’ employee advertisements or studying aerial 
photographs. Others are very sensible business practices, such as reverse engineering – that 
is, tearing apart the competitors’ products for analysis. Less acceptable, and certainly less 
hygienic, is the possibility of buying a competitor’s rubbish to sift for useful memoranda 
or components. Bugging is a controversial means of surveillance that is becoming more 
common now that equipment is inexpensive, reliable and small enough to be concealed. It 
is certainly not uncommon for competitors in retail environments to visit competing stores 
regularly, in order to gather information on promotions, point-of-sale materials and mes-
saging, innovations and customer service practice.