Common Private Sector Data Sources

Your Primary Competitor's Employees

sales

market research

planning

engineering

purchasing

former employees of the target company

Your Primary Competitor

Internet home page

catalogs and price lists

in-house publicaitons

press releases and speeches

advertisements and promotional materials

products

annual reports

regulatory filings

customers and suppliers

retailers, distributors, and agents

advertising and marketing agencies

Other Competitors

Business Information Services

Dun & Bradstreet

Standard & Poor's

credit reporting agencies

proprietary research firms

Chambers of Commerce

domestic

foreign chambers in the United States

U.S. chambers of commerce abroad

The private sector makes up the most eclectic of the four groups. In dealing with these sources, you and other CI professionals must avoid confusing the package with its contents. For example, assume that you have received a proprietary research report on a targeted company and are now reviewing the data it provides you on the firm's size, employees, sales, and so on. To verify the data, you may compare it with data you have obtained from another business information source, such as a business profile report. Suppose the facts appear identical. To an unskilled analyst, this appears to provide confirmation of the first set of data. However, that is not necessarily correct. You see, the report's author could have purchased the data on your competitor. So if it looks the same as data from another business source, that may be because it is the same. That does not mean it is correct. It is just a false confirmation.

These varied sources all collect, generate, and process data for a specific audience. To fully understand both the data you may find on your competitor and how to analyze it, you must understand from whom the media collects that data, how, and why.

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Common Private Sector Data Sources