The managerial payoff from spending the time and effort to gather and digest competitive intelligence about rivals' strategies and situations and gain some inkling of what moves they will be making comes from

separating rival companies into two groups$--$those who have been gaining market share and those who have been losing market share during the past $2-3$ years.

learning which rival companies have winning strategies and which ones have weak or flawed strategies.

$(1)$ avoiding the mistake of flying blind into competitive battle and being surprised by the fresh actions of rivals and $(2)$ helping a company to craft offensive and defensive strategic moves of its own with some confidence about what market maneuvers to expect from its rivals.

enabling company managers to determine which rival has the worst strategy and what to do to avoid making the same strategy mistakes.

being in better position to know whether the company's strategy should be mostly defensive in nature $($to help protect against the strategic offensives of rivals$)$ or mostly offensive $($to try to capitalize on the strategic flaws and mistakes of competitors$).$