Competitive intelligence research : an investigation of trends in the literature

Abstract

This article looked at competitive intelligence research reported from 1994 to 2014 in the ABI/Inform database to determine the development of competitive intelligence as subject field. This development can be attributed to several factors. Content analysis was used to establish research patterns and the author based the analysis on the extant literature and on the 338 articles that were gathered from the ABI/Inform database. Only peer-reviewed articles were analysed. The most popular term used in the literature is competitive intelligence, followed by business intelligence and marketing intelligence. The journals in which the articles appeared are scattered and few journals have published more than ten competitive intelligence articles. Few authors have published more than five articles.