Page 55 - DMGT408DMGT203_Marketing Management

Marketing Management/Essentials of Marketing

Notes
Example: To learn more about your company’s sales data, you can build a warehouse
that concentrates on sales. Using this warehouse, you can answer questions like “Who was our
best customer for this item last year?” This ability to define a data warehouse by subject matter,
sales in this case, makes the data warehouse subject oriented.

Self Assessment

Fill in the Blanks:
14. ......................... refers to automated data analysis of large amount of data stored in a data
warehouse.
15. ......................... refers to storing subject-based, integrated, non-volatile, time variant data
in support of managerial decisions.

2.6 Marketing Intelligence Systems

In the current fast-paced business climate, keeping up with macro-environmental changes, and
competition is becoming increasingly difficult. Marketing intelligence system refers to systematic
and ethical approach, procedures, and sources that marketing managers use to gather and analyse
everyday information about various developments with regard to competitors and other business
trends in the marketing environment. This intelligence is collected from various sources such as
newspapers, trade publications, business magazines, talking with suppliers, channel members,
customers, other managers, and sales force people.

About competitive intelligence, the general idea is that more than 80 per cent information is
public knowledge. The most important sources from which to obtain competitive intelligence
include competitors’ annual and financial reports, speeches by company executives, government
documents, trade organisations, online databases, and other popular and business press. The
company can take certain steps to obtain quality marketing intelligence. The company should
take steps to train and motivate field sales personnel about the types of information to report
regularly on any relevant developments in the marketplace. Besides sales force, the company
can take steps to motivate channel members to pass along important intelligence. The company
can also purchase competitors’ products, and attend trade fairs.
Some important questions that managers should ask about competitive intelligence are:
1. How fast does the competitive climate in our industry change? How important is it to
keep our knowledge about these changes current?
2. What are the objectives of our company about competitive intelligence?
3. Who are the important clients for competitive intelligence? To whom should the
intelligence effort be reported?

Did u know? With rapid developments in the area of software applications that run on
PCs, it is becoming increasingly possible to keep track of client lists and the various kinds
of contacts that are made with each client. Many such programmes keep track of clients’
names, addresses, phone and fax numbers, e-mail addresses, personal details such as
birthdays, likes and dislikes, product/brand usage, hobbies, club memberships, etc.
Most of today’s information systems are computer applications in a sophisticated data-driven
age. These enable marketers to be better informed about their customers, potential customers,
and competitors. This helps marketers to be more productive and establish and sustain

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