Konkurrensbevakning - En kvalitativ studie av svenska B2C-företag

Sammanfattning: Whether working within the clothing, electronics or FMCG-sector, every company today is facing immense competition affecting their margins and results. In an ever-changing world it is becoming increasingly important to track the development of your competitors. Competitor tracking should be a vital part of every company's strategy for embracing change. Today's existing frameworks focus on the existence of competition and its structure. However, limited research has been conducted on what strategies individual companies use to obtain information about important competitors and how they use that information to predict competitive behaviour. The academic literature used to describe the process of competitive intelligence is out-dated. Previous research in this field is often conducted before the digital revolution, and is therefore irrelevant since most processes today are digital. This paper uses a qualitative method consisting of 10 in-depth interviews carried out in eight different organizations to reveal the actual methods being used today. The results show that small companies tend to use less structured and less frequent methods, such as desktop research. On the other hand, larger companies tend to be more structured and use continuous methods by outsourcing to both online and offline tracking services. Since research has shown that a more structured approach to tracking competitors generate a higher ROA, larger companies have a competitive advantage in this sense. The study also emphasizes the need of further research in this area. The academic landscape needs to adapt to new trends and methods to be relevant. As competition is increasing and new methods are being pursued the importance of competitive intelligence will continue to evolve and become an important factor to business success.