One of the major realities of achieving business success today is') he necessity of understanding markets and competition. Sensing what is happening and is likely to occur in the future is complicated by competitive threats beyond traditional industry boundaries. For example, microwave dinners compete with McDonald's, CD-ROM compete with books, and-fax transmission competes with overnight letter delivery.

Our objective is to learn how market-driven firms are able to sense what is happening in their markets, to develop business and marketing strategies to seize opportunities and counter threats, and to anticipate what the market will be like in the future.22 As illustrated by Intuit, everyone in the organization must be wired into customers and competition. There are several market-sensing methods available to guide the collection and analysis of information.