Effects of the enterprise characteristics, Competitive Intelligence (CI) interest level and information level on CI activities

The importance of competitive intelligence (CI), which collects/uses information about competitors, industries, etc., has been increased due to the rapidly changing business environment of today. However, there exist few domestic researches on CI. With this background, a study of domestic companies was performed that examines how the enterprise characteristics, the interest on CI, and the information level affect the way/level and outcome of CI. Results showed that bigger enterprises have the higher interest on CI than smaller ones and enterprises having high interest perform CI activities systematically and variously including using the internet. Further, the results uncovered the enterprises performing CI actively use the information acquired from the activity in their business. The results also revealed that there are no difference between the IT companies and the others and that the information level is relevant to the Internet CI activity level.