Visualization of the Field of Competi-tive Intelligence based on Persian Publi-cations: A Scientometric Analysis

The purpose of this study is content analysis of scientific and research articles published in the field of competitive intelligence.

The present study was carried out with a mixed approach and quantitative and qualitative content analysis methods were used. The first statistical population of this study is Persian articles published in the field of Competitive Intelligence (72 case). Due to the small size of the research community, there was no need for sampling. Quantitative data from this research were collected through a researcher-made checklist. In order to determine which subjects the articles were dealt with, it was necessary to use a standard plan in which the thematic categories of the field were specified. But due to the lack of this plan, researchers interviewed with competitive intelligence experts (another research population) about what matters in the area of ​​competitive intelligence. Sampling from this population was targeted and 10 experts were selected. The interview was semi-structured and conducted electronically. A thematic plan was obtained for the separation of the articles, namely, qualitative content analysis was used in this part of the research. The researchers then categorized the papers based on this theme. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentage.

The findings of this study showed that the amount of articles in the Competitive Intelligence area was upward and male authors had more contributions (78.81%). Co-authorship happened mostly with two or three authors (67.41%) and most of the authors were university professors (22.31%) and doctoral students (91.52%). Commercial Management Journal and New Marketing Research (72.9%) has the largest number of articles in this area. The dominant scientific-specialized discipline in this field of management is with the business orientation (88.20%). Among the universities, the contribution of the University of Tehran is more than the other institutions (44.19%). Most citations occurred in articles in 1395 (655 cases). Most studies were in the field of competitive intelligence on companies and organizations (89.8%), the main tool used was the questionnaire (94.81%) and the preferred method was quantitative research (50.87%). Among the thematic categories of competitive intelligence, fundamental concepts were researched more (72.2%).

The results of the research showed that although in recent years growth has been made in the field of competitive intelligence, but despite the interdisciplinarity nature of this area, there is a deficiency in participation with other fields of study such as information science and social sciences. Also, there is no uniform expansion in the subject categories of this field.