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Information Gathering Approaches for Business Ethics

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Evaluate each of the following approaches that a business firm could use to gather information about competition. For each approach, mark your feeling about its appropriateness using the following scale:

1. definitely not appropriate, 2. probably not appropriate, 3. undecided, 4. probably appropriate, and 5. definitely appropriate

The business firm should try to get useful information about competitors by:

_____ Careful study of trade journals

_____ Wiretapping the telephones of competitors

_____ Posing as a potential customer to competitors

_____ Getting loyal customers to put out a phone "request for proposal" soliciting competitors' bids

_____ Buying competitors' products and taking them apart

_____ Hiring management consultants who have worked for competitors

_____ Rewarding competitors' employees for useful "tips"

_____ Questioning competitors' customers and/or suppliers

_____ Buying and analyzing competitors' garbage

_____ Advertising and interviewing for nonexistent jobs

_____ Taking public tours of competitors' facilities

_____ Releasing false information about the company in order to confuse competitors.

_____ Questioning competitors' technical people at trade shows and conferences

_____ Hiring key people away from competitors

_____ Analyzing competitors' labor union contracts

_____ Having employees date persons who work for competitors

_____ Studying aerial photographs of competitors' facilities

After marking each of the preceding approaches, indicate for any 5, 4, 2, or 1, why you thought these acts were either appropriate or inappropriate.

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Solution Summary

This solution evaluates seventeen approaches that a business firm could use to gather information about competition. It rates each approach on a scale of 1-5 and then comments on the ethics of each approach. The commens in this solution are 1,217 words.

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Please refer to attached file response, which is also presented below. First, I rated the items and then I provided information about why I rated the items the way I did. I also attached an article from which I drew for the second part of this assignment. Since this is a subjective survey, please go through it to be sure that the ratings fit with your own perceptions. I hope this helps and take care.

Evaluate each of the following approaches that a business firm could use to gather information about competition. For each approach, mark your feeling about its appropriateness using the following scale:

1. definitely not appropriate, 2. probably not appropriate, 3. undecided, 4. probably appropriate, and 5. definitely appropriate

The business firm should try to get useful information about competitors by:
__5__ Careful study of trade journals
__1__ Wiretapping the telephones of competitors
__5__ Posing as a potential customer to competitors
__3__ Getting loyal customers to put out a phone "request for proposal" soliciting competitors' bids
__2__ Buying competitors' products and taking them apart
__3__ Hiring management consultants who have worked for competitors
__1__ Rewarding competitors' employees for useful "tips"
__4__ Questioning competitors' customers and/or suppliers
__1__ Buying and analyzing competitors' garbage
__1__ Advertising and interviewing for nonexistent jobs
__5__ Taking public tours of competitors' facilities
__1__ Releasing false information about the company in order to confuse competitors.
__4__ Questioning competitors' technical people at trade shows and conferences
__4__ Hiring key people away from competitors
__3__ Analyzing competitors' labor union contracts
__1__ Having employees date persons who work for competitors
__5__ Studying aerial photographs of competitors' facilities

After marking each of the preceding approaches, indicate for any 5, 4, 2, or 1, why you thought these acts were either appropriate or inappropriate.

__5__ Careful study of trade journals
Competitor analysis ('CA') is the in-depth study of one or more rivals (or potential rivals) to gather information on their structure, strategies, strengths, weaknesses and future directions. This information is then used to make informed decisions about everything from marketing tactics to long-term business strategies. This includes research that most companies already be engaged in to varying degrees, such as reading trade papers or obtaining rivals' sales literature - although the systematic gathering of information from ...

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