Collecting information from secondary sources such as business, government, trade, and general-interest publications plays an important role in

a) environmental analysis.
b) competitive forces.
c) environmental scanning.
d) procompetitive legislation.
e) self-regulatory forces.

(C) Environmental scanning

Explanation:

 The environment scanning is one of the type of information gathering process that helps maintain the relationship in an organization.

The main objective of the environment scanning is that it determine the actual future direction of the company as it helps in identifying the threats, strength, opportunities and the weakness of an organization.

According to the given question, the environment scanning plays an important as helps in collecting the data from the secondary sources like the government, business and the trade.    

 Therefore, Option (C) is correct.

answernaturalistic observation;