Competitive intelligence practices of South African and Belgian exporters

The objective of the study was to compare competitive intelligence (CI) practices of exporters in South Africa and Belgium.

An e‐mail and postal survey in a sample of 292 Belgian and 309 South African exporting companies was carried out in which CI‐practices and opinions and attitudes towards CI were measured.

Most respondents report a “CI culture” in their companies. South African and Belgian exporters are, however, not yet well equipped and not very active to conduct effective CI, especially in the areas of planning, process and structure, data collection, data analysis, and especially skills development. In both countries CI‐activities are usually not organized in a separate department and, if they are, CI is mostly done in the marketing and sales department. Managers from both countries consider similar types of information important, and they rely on similar sources of information. Although the responsibility for CI is more a top management issue in Flanders than it is in South Africa, South African companies have on average a longer tradition of organized CI‐activity and more full‐ and part‐time staff is involved in CI‐activity. These differences can be attributed to the fact that, as compared to Belgium, South Africa is an emerging export country in which the need for more formalised CI‐activity focusing on the collection of relevant data is more apparent.

This is the first comprehensive study of CI‐practices in the two countries. The results lead to a number of recommendations for the exporting companies in both countries and in general add to the knowledge of the position of CI in companies.