You could look at it that way!

Some might describe Gartner as a company that dispenses reasonable advice on demand to companies who need guidance on subjects well outside their core competencies. This is very much making money from incompetence, but it's the sort of profiting from incompetence that every expert adviser does.

Well said, although I would trade "ignorance" for "incompetance." People in business have to regularly make decisions outside of their comfort zone. That means they often start as ignorant, not incompetent.

As for the thread at hand, I second the answer that Gartner exists to provide executives a backstop of something goes wrong. People dont often get fired for buying something in the magic quadrant.

In the same way that the supermarket is there to gobble money up from your inability to grow your own vegetables, mix up your own detergents, manufacture your own batteries, etc.

That is a wrong analogy. If you are a retailer competing with Amazon you should be building a competent tech team in-house with some external help if need be rather than relying on fuzzy reports to choose vendors. This is a quick-fix and makes it easier for vendors to fool you (knowing you have no tech competence). Don't reinvent everything but at least be competent enough to choose which supermarket to go to, which veggies to eat, which detergent/battery to use.

I disagree with your entire post. If you are a retailer competing with Amazon then the cost of building a competent tech team in house will bankrupt you. And if you are a retailer competing with Amazon you need a LOT of insight from the market to find ways to compete. It's almost impossible to hire that insight in a reasonable time frame but very possible to find consultants who can help.

This is a question of comparative specialisation. Why learn how to grow an amazing garden, invest hundreds of hours in working that garden, to save a few hundred dollars (and losing the opportunity to earn tens of thousands of dollars) if you can just go to supermarket and buy food?

Why hire a strategic analyst with executive experience for 5 years if all they are going to tell you is 5% more than a Gartner consultant can offer you for 1/10th the annual salary?

To use your analogy, why should this hypothetical retailer hire an in-house team if they can get everything they need from another party for cheaper, with a small opportunity cost? And why is knowing which detergent to purchase making you any less reliant on the comparative specialisation of the supermarket?

They are a consultant like any other. End of the day they are best used as a tool to use as part of a procurement or strategy making process.

Being able to talk to someone with some clue and have access to generally well thought out papers is useful. If you’re an SME in an area, they may give you additional perspective.

If you just read the Magic Quadrant for Business Process outsourcing or whatever and just call the top one, you are dumb. Conversely, if you’re going to be making a purchase in the space, and have never heard of 2/5 vendors on the top right, you may be missing something.

It is a business choice: rely on external people who do research all day or try to invest your own time. The question is: What's your core business?

All of capitalism is making money on incompetence (which you might lazily use to lump in lack of information on the part of a party in a transaction).