International Journal of Academic Research in Economics and Management Sciences September 2012, Vol. 1, No. 5 ISSN: 2226-3624 89 www.hrmars.com An Empirical Study of Factors Affecting Attitude of Salespeople toward Competitive Intelligence Activities Wadie Nasri Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Higher Institute of Management of Gabes, University of Gabes, Tunisia E-mail: wdnasri@gmail.com Mohamed Zarai Assistant of Marketing in Faculty of Business Administration, Majmaah University, Saudite Arabia E-mail: m_zarai@yahoo.com Abstract This paper aims to understand how salespeople's motivation and attitude to gather and transmit marketing intelligence to management may be influenced by individual (organizational commitment and participation in decision making,) and managerial (control system, role ambiguity, feedback and recognition) factors. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is employed to examine the causal relationship between proposed constructs. A survey involving a total of 240 respondents is conducted and confirmatory factor analysis used to determine the measurement efficacies. All the individual and managerial factors influence both motivation and attitude toward marketing intelligence by salespeople. These findings may provide useful guidelines for managers who wish to improve the information gathering activities of their salespeople. Keywords: Salespeople, Competitive intelligence, Motivation, Attitude, Structural equation Introduction In the present complex environment and changing conditions within the organizations, managers are confronted with large volumes of information that they must face and incorporate into their decision making process. Therefore, Managing marketing information has become one of the most vital elements of effective marketing (Talvinen, 1995). To effectively manage this information, a company needs marketing information systems. A marketing information system is a continuing and interacting structure of people, equipment and procedures to gather, sort, analyse, evaluate, and distribute pertinent, timely and accurate information for use by marketing decision makers to improve their marketing planning, implementation, and control (Kotler, 2002). Marketing information system is efficient tool providing past, present and projected information relating to internal operations and external intelligence (Armstrong and Kotler, 2007). It supports the planning, control, and operational