Qualitative Research in Intelligence and Marketing: The New Strategic Convergence

Citation

Landrigan, M. (2001), "Qualitative Research in Intelligence and Marketing: The New Strategic Convergence", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 18 No. 5, pp. 449-457. https://doi.org/10.1108/jcm.2001.18.5.449.3

The purpose of this book, as stated by the author, is “to consciously deal with the fact that, most essentially, the field of competitive intelligence (CI) embraces techniques of analysis that rely upon intuition, subjective analysis, and qualitative (as juxtaposed to scientific or quantitative) data” (p. ix). The author evidently perceives a threat to this tradition because he has constructed an elaborate and well‐researched thesis to support the legitimacy of qualitative methods. While he is clearly on the side of the humanists in the field, he gives equal time to the scientists and never rejects their place at the CI table. Rather, he writes an eloquent raison d’être for allowing due respect to those CI professionals who embrace all methodologies in their quest to add value for their clients seeking strategic dominance over their competitors.

Competitive intelligence is an umbrella term referring to a “process of gathering and analyzing an array of information that has strategic or tactical importance to the organization.” This definition is in contrast to “the tendency to equate CI with the gathering and manipulation of ‘open source’ information that is readily available in public documents” (p. 91).

The author does a fine job of delineating the problems and threats facing the field of competitive intelligence. Besides a perceived over‐emphasis on statistics and over‐reliance on technology, the author lists “high turnover and/or lack of analytic training” (p. 79) as danger signs. He also takes a mighty swipe when he supposes, “to a significant extent, the growth of management information systems is an artifact of the tendency to discard the seasoned, long‐term employee who, if still on the job, would have been readily available as sources of information” (p. 78). The Internet comes in for its share of blame for eroding a more holistic approach to CI. The author is a strong proponent of transcending number crunching by ensuring that the data are being turned into useful information through thoughtful analyses and a well‐rounded toolkit.

The book is divided into three parts. Part I (Chapters 2 and 3) provides “a panoramic view of competitive intelligence and how it can actually serve clients” (p. 7). In it, the author presents the basic paradigms that he will build upon as the book progresses. He includes a state‐of‐the‐profession that elaborates upon the nature of the discipline, as well as its limitations. Then, he lays the groundwork for his merging of the social sciences and competitive intelligence.

The second part of the book (Chapters 4‐10) is the soul of the book. This section presents the basic premise that CI is rooted in the qualitative disciplines of the humanities and discusses this hypothesis from many different angles.

Qualitative methods are justified with “an analysis of the soul searching that took place in social anthropology” while considering “specific ways in which a primary reliance upon the formal methods of science have been justified and how these justifications can be rebutted” (p. 50). As the author states in this chapter’s summary, “If competitive intelligence professionals are to be given a free hand to employ qualitative methods as required, they must be able to defend the decision to use them” (p. 68).

The author professes that “the orientation of intelligence contrasts sharply with the academic and scholarly pedigree of other forms of business research and analysis” (p. 74) and then proceeds in the next chapters to construct just such a pedigree enhanced with practitioner‐based (vs. “ivory tower”) models. He delves into the “espionage model” as an example of “applying subjective judgment in strategic ways to diverse, incomplete, and/or flawed data sets” (p. 75). He then presents a number of subjective and intuitive techniques that stem from the social sciences and are in wide use today in a business context. They are the product life cycle, Boston Consulting Group portfolio analysis, General Electric/McKinsey strategic planning grid, and the Delphi method. The author also introduces marketing ethnography and proposes that ethnographic principles and techniques (shadowing/surveillance, benchmarking, reverse engineering, and crisis management) can be used by a CI professional. Individualistic and collective humanistic methods of investigation, along with their epistemology, are compared.

Walle then “begins the process of rehabilitating the qualitative methods of intelligence that were developed in World War II through a review of the achievements of that era” and “the value of these classic anthropological approaches is justified and updated” (p. 157).

In the third part of the book, the author presents the case that CI professionals, as distinct from marketing researchers, should be performing secondary/open source research because they are better suited to interpreting the resultant data through analyses grounded in the humanities and social sciences. Chapter 11, the meatiest chapter in the book in my opinion, operationalizes the humanistic and social sciences components. Here are details regarding specific, qualitative “culture at a distance” methodologies. The final chapter develops a “qualitative audit” with many details on how to assess “the degree to which an organization is equipped to profit from state‐of‐the‐art qualitative theories and methods and enjoy the benefits they provide” (p. 199).

The two appendices are intriguing. The first attacks the war and sports analogies so prevalent in business today and contrasts their goals with a more desirable service‐oriented marketing perspective. The second appendix makes a poignant case for hiring humanists as CI professionals and offers suggestions regarding their motivation and retention.

Competitive intelligence professionals may lack the respect of their clients and their hands may be tied by clients or management unsympathetic to the qualitative methods that they use. This book will go a long way to help them to both justify their value to an organization and legitimize their methods. By reading this book, a CI professional will learn an incredible amount about the historical background, sociological roots, and anthropological underpinnings of the techniques and paradigms of the profession. There are some hints for the CI practioner sprinkled throughout the text (most notably in chapters 11 and 12), but this book would be best for researchers in academic settings.

Each chapter can be read separately without worry of the need to remember what was read earlier. The author often reiterates the book’s core premise at the beginning of each chapter and summarizes the pertinent facts from previous chapters. In addition, he lays out what will be covered in the upcoming pages. A chapter summary or “discussion”, along with a useful glossary, is provided at each chapter’s end. The references included with each chapter will also allow further exploratory streams for those intrigued by a particular theory. I found the numerous tables in each chapter to be the most cogent approaches to many of the ideas and paradigms.

There is a sense of repetitiveness in the text that frustrated me. Then again, I live in a world of PowerPoint presentations and executive summaries. The book is a scholarly treatment of an interesting topic that contributes to an on‐going dialog on the value of the “artistic researcher” in an increasingly high‐tech CI milieu.