A National Pet Health Care Provider Recently Made a Competitive

A national pet health care provider recently made a competitive move when it acquired new information. A rival had "preannounced" a new pet coverage product in a tiny community newspaper six months prior to launching it. The national pet health care provider's marketing manager was notified immediately through a news monitoring service. The firm quickly added a similar offering, and got it to the market before its rival. The marketing manager relied on ________ to keep abreast of competitors' activities.

A) legitimate environmental scanning
B) economic espionage
C) kickbacks
D) corporate piracy
E) primary market research