Competitive Intelligence practices of South African and Belgian exporters
Date
2005Author
De Pelsmacker, Patrick
Viviers, Wilma
Saayman, Andrea
Cuyvers, Ludo
Muller, Marié-Luce
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Purpose – The objective of the study was to compare competitive intelligence (CI) practices of
exporters in South Africa and Belgium.
Design/methodology/approach – An e-mail and postal survey in a sample of 292 Belgian and 309
South African exporting companies was carried out in which CI-practices and opinions and attitudes
towards CI were measured.
Findings – Most respondents report a “CI culture” in their companies. South African and Belgian
exporters are, however, not yet well equipped and not very active to conduct effective CI, especially in
the areas of planning, process and structure, data collection, data analysis, and especially skills
development. In both countries CI-activities are usually not organized in a separate department and, if
they are, CI is mostly done in the marketing and sales department. Managers from both countries
consider similar types of information important, and they rely on similar sources of information.
Although the responsibility for CI is more a top management issue in Flanders than it is in
South Africa, South African companies have on average a longer tradition of organized CI-activity and
more full- and part-time staff is involved in CI-activity. These differences can be attributed to the fact
that, as compared to Belgium, South Africa is an emerging export country in which the need for more
formalised CI-activity focusing on the collection of relevant data is more apparent.
Originality/value – This is the first comprehensive study of CI-practices in the two countries.
The results lead to a number of recommendations for the exporting companies in both countries and in
general add to the knowledge of the position of CI in companies.