The 2013 Global Market Intelligence found that while money spend on projects and services had grown by 53%, half of all companies spend only €150,000 or less.

However, companies said that decision-making was 15% more efficient in those companies with a market intelligence function in place while 80% said returns on investments in market intelligence had paid-off.

Companies with annual revenues of over €10bn spend significantly more on market intelligence than companies in the revenue band of €5bn-€10bn.

The survey said that the sharp increase was “potentially explained by companies centralising market intelligence
purchases to a greater extent when reaching a certain size, whereas purchases are kept on regional or country-level budgets in smaller companies”.

The GIA added that despite having one of the largest concentration of companies with highly developed market and competitive intelligence capabilities in the world, at 84% compared to the global average of 64 percent, the US fell behind Europe and Asia Pacific when it comes to efficient decision making.

In addition, they also suffer the most from incomplete or inaccurate information and are less likely to support their decision with intelligence.

“It is crucial that US companies learn to be productive with their investments and focus their efforts on creating true impact. It is also critical that organisations learn to use market intelligence to examine their entire business eco-system, and not just look at their competition alone,” said Jouko Virtanen, GIA senior vice president of Americas.