Identifying the Challenges of Implementing Intelligence Marketing from the Perspective of Food Industry Managers

EXTENDED ABSTRACT
 
Introduction
Technological developments such as the Internet and smartphones have created structural changes in company strategies and changed business paradigms. In the era of big data and the increasing importance of information in this era, intelligence marketing is an important and unique way through which businesses can significantly expand their information channels. Intelligence marketing can improve the company's performance through competitive advantage in market information management, organizational learning, and intellectual capital. The ability of market intelligence has increased the competence of businesses to identify and exploit foreign opportunities, and as a result, it can prepare them to be present in the global arena. Many advantages of intelligence marketing for businesses have made it inevitable for them to enter this field. Before entering the field of intelligence marketing, which requires the use of new technologies, one should be aware of its challenges. Identifying these challenges can act as a predictive monitoring tool and reduce the risks of failure due to the use of intelligence marketing. Based on this, the current research seeks to answer the question from the point of view of food industry managers, what challenges do these industries face in applying intelligence marketing?
Methodology
The current research is practical in terms of its purpose and it belongs to the category of qualitative methods with inductive approach. The statistical population of the research is all managers active in the food industry of the country, and research data was collected from 15 of them until reaching theoretical saturation. The sampling method was the targeted method and the data collection tool was semi-structured interviews. Data analysis was done with the thematic analysis method and using the analytical method of the thematic network, presented by Atride-Stirling (2001). Based on this method, first, the texts of the interviews were implemented and by reflecting on them, the basic themes (key codes of the text), then, the organizing themes (themes obtained from the basic themes), and finally, the overarching themes were extracted. became Then, these themes were drawn as a web network by Maxqda 2020 software, and the prominent themes of these three levels were shown along with the relationships between them.
 Result and discussion
The study identified seven general challenges related to the adoption of intelligence marketing in the food industry. In order of importance, these challenges include issues related to cost, time, and technology (time constraints, financial challenges, infrastructure issues, and selecting appropriate tools); the availability of skilled and efficient human resources (lack of specialized personnel in intelligence  marketing and marketing in general); macro and industry-level challenges (lack of experience in intelligence marketing, competition-related challenges, legal and regulatory challenges, and social media filtering); managerial challenges (managers' commitment to traditional systems, resistance to change, lack of knowledge and awareness among managers, limitations in using social media, and leadership challenges); cultural challenges for adopting new technologies (building trust among customers and fostering internal organizational trust); data collection and analysis (collecting accurate and sufficient data, analyzing marketing data); and the execution of strategic intelligence marketing (challenges related to products and services, appropriate customer segmentation, intelligence marketing strategies, establishing effective communication with customers, producing relevant content, smart advertising, and improving SEO).
Conclusion
The results of this research have practical suggestions for managers active in the food industry. Since the adoption and application of intelligence marketing is an undeniable necessity for active businesses in all industries, senior managers should be aware of the challenges of using new technologies before entering this field. Based on the results of this research, some of the challenges facing the food industry depend on macro measures and policies, but in the case of proper exposure to other challenges, it can be properly planned. Therefore, the practical suggestion of this research is to consider the controllable challenges of using intelligence marketing and to formulate appropriate strategies and tactics to face these challenges. Conducting this research has faced limitations. Here are some of the most important ones. Since the current research data was collected from managers active in the food industry researchers have limited access to these people and have faced difficulties in interviewing key people in this industry. Also, the lack of familiarity of some managers with the topic of intelligence marketing had caused problems in data collection. Since this research was conducted with a qualitative approach to identify the challenges of using intelligence marketing in the food industry, it is suggested that the identified challenges be further evaluated with quantitative methods. Also, conducting similar research in other industries is one of the suggestions of this research for future researchers.