Competitive intelligence in organizations and a model proposal

In today's world, competition between businesses both in domestic and international markets is regarded as an economic war, so competitive intelligence is gaining more importance for business organizations. It can be asserted that intelligence activities are available in economic and commercial operations of business organizations. In this respect, the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) plays a key role. It is significantly important for businesses to have an effective competitive intelligence function so as to be successful in the global competitive environment by providing a competitive advantage. On the other hand, the main motivation behind this thesis study is the low number of academic studies in the field of Competitive Intelligence, lack of awareness and uncertainty of application methods in businesses in Turkey. After a literature review in the field of Competitive Intelligence, a survey was conducted on organizations in Eskişehir Industrial Zone to collect information on the awareness of enterprises regarding competitive intelligence, their application levels, data collection and analysis activities and functionality of intelligence activities. Descriptive statistics, the information obtained from the survey results, are presented as mean, standard deviation, percentage, and deviation. To examine the application awareness, success, and benefit levels on Competitive Intelligence, frequency analysis is applied based on the characteristics of the employees and enterprises. Cross tables are prepared and proportional evaluations are included to proportionally evaluate the application awareness, success and benefit levels in the field of Competitive Intelligence. The analyses are carried out with the SPSS 25 package program. In line with the findings obtained as a result of the study it is observed that the Competitive Intelligence awareness and application levels of the enterprises participating in the survey are quite low. To eliminate this deficiency, the scales of the enterprises are taken into account and a model is proposed for the establishment of Competitive Intelligence function in enterprises. Keywords: Competitive advantage, Competitive intelligence, Intelligence in enterprises, Competitive intelligence model proposal