MRA Competitive Intelligence Gathering 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which tool is most appropriate for tracking real-time changes to a competitor's website content?
- Google Alerts
- SimilarWeb
- Visualping or ChangeDetection.io (Correct answer)
- SEMrush Domain Analytics
Correct answer: Visualping or ChangeDetection.io
Tools like Visualping and ChangeDetection.io monitor specific web pages and alert analysts to content changes as they occur.
Question 2: In CI, 'HUMINT' refers to intelligence gathered from:
- Automated web scraping tools
- Human sources such as industry experts and customers (Correct answer)
- Publicly traded company filings
- Historical market trend databases
Correct answer: Human sources such as industry experts and customers
HUMINT (Human Intelligence) in a CI context means insights gathered through conversations with knowledgeable individuals like experts, customers, or channel partners.
Question 3: A competitor abruptly drops prices by 20% with no public announcement. What type of competitive action does this represent?
- Flanking move (Correct answer)
- Guerrilla tactic
- Preemptive strike
- Retaliatory signal
Correct answer: Flanking move
A flanking move involves attacking a competitor's weak point — in this case, using price to undercut and capture price-sensitive market segments.
Question 4: What does 'OSINT' stand for in competitive intelligence gathering?
- Operational Systems Intelligence Network Technology
- Open Source Intelligence (Correct answer)
- Organized Strategic Intelligence and Tracking
- Outbound Sales Intelligence Nexus Tool
Correct answer: Open Source Intelligence
OSINT stands for Open Source Intelligence, referring to information gathered from publicly available sources such as news, social media, and government databases.
Question 5: Which analysis technique maps the competitive landscape by plotting companies on two strategic dimensions simultaneously?
- SWOT matrix
- Perceptual mapping
- Strategic group mapping (Correct answer)
- Competitive response profiling
Correct answer: Strategic group mapping
Strategic group mapping clusters competitors that follow similar strategies along two chosen axes, revealing the competitive structure of an industry.
Question 6: A CI team discovers a competitor's product roadmap through a disgruntled employee's social media post. What should the team do first?
- Immediately act on the intelligence without further review
- Verify the information through corroborating open sources (Correct answer)
- Contact the employee for more details
- Publish the finding in an internal CI report
Correct answer: Verify the information through corroborating open sources
Unverified single-source intelligence — especially from potentially biased sources — must be corroborated before being acted upon or reported.
Question 7: Which of the following best describes 'counter-intelligence' in a market research context?
- Analyzing competitors' weaknesses to exploit them
- Protecting your own organization's strategic information from competitor analysis (Correct answer)
- Collecting intelligence on competitors' counter-measures
- Using disinformation to mislead competitor analysts
Correct answer: Protecting your own organization's strategic information from competitor analysis
Counter-intelligence in business involves safeguarding proprietary strategies, data, and operations from being gathered and used by competitors.
MRA Competitive Intelligence Gathering 3
Which tool is most appropriate for tracking real-time changes to a competitor's website content?