Companies need to keep a tab on the competitor activities. Market research is the act of gathering competitive intelligence and is done by a company to find its own standing against the competitors or when a company is entering a new market or industry where there are already existing players. The most fundamental question being tried to answer is what is the market share of the various companies in the market. Market share by revenue might be different from market share by volume shipped.

Types of Competitive Intelligence

Research questions for gaining competitive intelligence can be one or more among the following but not restricted to these only.

Channel Partners	New products	Consumers	Market share	Self-assessment/ NPS
1. What are the competitors doing to attract new channel partners?	1. Have new competitors or alternative products entered any new market?	1. What category of consumers are targeted by the competition? Is there a niche market serviced by competition?	1. What is the market share of the major competitors or has there been recent changes in the market share of companies?	1. How efficient company’s systems are in terms of accounting, complaint redressal, scheme disbursement, etc?
2. What short term and long term schemes are being run for the channel partners?	2. Which innovations are the competitors bringing in their product?	2. What has been the recent changes in the competitor marketing communications?	2. What is the market share of the unorganized sector competitors?	2. How satisfied are the customers with the company’s marketing/ supply chain activities vis-à-vis those of the competitors?
3. What are the billing and wholesale prices of competitors?	3. What is the feedback on the product quality compared to competitor’s product?	3. What are the consumer schemes being run by the competition?	3. What activities by the company will have the highest impact to increase the market share?	3. How likely are the channel partners (promoters) to recommend our product?

Though superficially all the research questions for getting competitive intelligence look different, there are deep relationships among them and response on one question impacts the response on another.