Competitive Intelligence Report: Barclaycard Today, Barclaycard has grown from its relatively humble beginnings in 1966 to become one of the leading credit card companies in the United Kingdom with more than 10,000,000 cardholders as well as almost nine million cardholders abroad. Although the company has enjoyed a steady increase in the number of cardholders and Barclaycard has been a first mover in introducing new technologies into its business plan in recent

Thus, the competitive intelligence assisted the company to align its strategic plan as well as keeping executive informed about the key element of decision-making. The company also derived advantages from market intelligence advantages and the advantages assisted the company to understand the market activities and competitive market environment. Typically, Avnet also used the competitive intelligence to create a Strategic Leverage Matrix (SLM) that the company literarily plots to understand the

2. Is it ethical to send an attractive employee to a bar to "hang out" with a competitive employee in the hopes of getting information? Again, this is quite dependent upon the situation. If one "assigns" the attractive employee to participate in espionage as part of their job duty, and it is fully disclosed, then it is not necessarily unethical -- any more than sending someone to shop for a

Personal Statement At present, I am a graduate student at the Information Systems Department with a 3.7 GPA. Over the course of pursuing my master's degree, I have become increasingly aware of the importance of competitive intelligence (CI) in the business world. With this in mind, I have decided to apply to the certification program in CI to enhance my current studies and marketability as an employee once I graduate. The success

First of all, the Internet, as well as local press and articles, will be important in defining the general characteristics of the market and consumers. Subsequently, specialty articles, edited by business organizations such as the local Chamber of Commerce will provide useful information on all the companies in a certain economic sector, namely the company's direct competitors. Relevant information in terms of the consumers can also be available from

Performance Assessment in Competitive Intelligence: An exploration, synthesis and research agenda, written by David Blenkhorn from Wilfred Laurier University and Craig Fleisher from Windsor University. The purpose of the article is to "answer the vital question -- What are the critical factors to assess competitive intelligence (CI) performance?" The research question refers to the role that competitive intelligence plays in a company's profitability. The question is interesting in that