Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Managing Products For Business Markets
Managing Products For Business Markets
C. K. Prahalad’s view :
– Competencies of a firm provide a measure of its capacity to create new
business opportunities.
– Core product share provides a measure of market influence.
“ Intel is not in the personal computer (PC) assembly business (eg. IBM,
CPQ) or purely PC marketing business (e. Dell, Packard Bell). Intel
manufactures a key module. However, Intel’s influence in the PC industry is
significantly greater than any single PC manufacture.”
Core Competencies and Selected Products at Canon
• Core competencies
embodied in superior
employee skills &
technologies they have
mastered, unique ways
that employees combine
these technologies, and
market knowledge that
the firm has
accumulated.
• Canon focuses on
basics of what creates
value for customer—
which includes both
technical and
organizational skills.
Three Tests to Identify
Core Competencies
Core
Benefits
Add-on
Customer Value
Price
Sacrifices Acquisition
Costs
Operations
Costs
Source: Adapted from Ajay Menon, Christian Homburg, and Nikolas Beutin, “Understanding Customer Value,”
Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, 12, no. 2 (2005), pp. 4–7.
PRODUCT POLICY
Through product policy, a firm attempts to satisfy customer needs
and build sustainable competitive advantage by capitalizing on its
core competencies.
13
Steps for Building Strong B2B Brand
Functional attributes are primary
ingredients and supplementary features,
product reliability, durability and
serviceability, service effectiveness, style
and design and price.
Image associations relate to company’s
standing in the industry and their overall
reputation.
14
Elements Of Brand Trust
Probity
Value Caring
Resonance
15
B2B Brand Equity
The creation of significant brand equity
involves reaching the top of the brand
pyramid, and will occur only if the right
building blocks are put into place.
Brand salience relates to how often and
easily the brand is evoked under various
purchase or consumption situations.
Brand performance relates to how the
product or service meets customer’s
functional needs.
16
B2B Brand Equity
Brand imagery deals with the
manufacturer’s reputation in the
market.
Brand judgments focus on customer’s
own personal opinions and evaluations.
Brand feelings are customer’s
emotional responses and reactions
with respect to the brand (and the
company).
17
B2B Brand Equity
Brand resonance refers to the nature of
relationship that customers have with the
brand and the extent to which customers
feel that they are “in sync” with the brand.
Resonance is characterized in terms of the
intensity or depth of the bond customers
have with the brand, as well as the activity
engendered by this loyalty.
18
Difficulties In B2B Branding
• Building strong brand equity is a relatively long-
term process that revolves around building value
for customers first, from which comes positive
associations about the product and the
company, and building broader associations.
• The most powerful associations come from
customers’ direct experiences.
19
Difficulties In B2B Branding
• Every time customers interact with a
supplier, with its products, or interact with
customer service person, impressions are
formed about the company, the products,
and its employees.
• Strong B2B brands are, therefore, built
one customer at a time.
20
Drivers of Brand Attitude Change
• Dramatic and visible new products aggressively supported by
advertising
• Increases in brand attitude associated with appointment of
well-recognized executive officer who introduced new
strategy
• Brand attitude depends on competitive actions.
• Product problems associated with several declines in brand
attitude
• Legal actions were associated with decreases in brand
attitude
– Isolating Technology Adopters:
• Once a particular threshold of consumer acceptance
was achieved, there was a stampede.
• Discontinuous innovations.
– Main Street :
Aftermarket development. Frantic waves of mass-market adoption
begin to subside. Supply exceeds demand.
Develop value based strategies targeted in particular segments of end-
users. Operational excellence in production and distribution as well as
finely tuned market segmentation strategies.
Customer Equity
• Discounted lifetime values of a firm’s customer base. (Rust,
Zeithaml & Lemon, 2000, 2004).
• Value Equity: Utility of a brand : Quality, Price and convenience.
• Relationship Equity: Loyalty, recognition, knowledge building.
• Brand equity tends to put more emphasis on the front end of
marketing programs and intangible value. Customer equity tends
to put more emphasis on the ‘back end’ of marketing programs and
the realized value of marketing activities in terms of revenue.
Corporate Branding and Brand Architecture