It is essential to understand the roles of buying-center members or Decision Making Units (DMUs) before identifying the individuals and groups involved in the buying-decision process. It is helpful to the industrial marketers to develop an effective promotion strategy. The roles of buying center members are as follows: Initiators: The initiators might be any individuals in the buying firm. Often, the users of a product/service play the role of the initiators. Buyers: The major roles of buyers are obtaining quotations (or offers) from suppliers, supplier evaluation and selection, negotiation, processing purchase orders, speed up deliveries, and implementing purchasing policies of the organization. Generally, they are the purchase (or material) officers and executives. Users: The user is those individuals who use the product or service that is to be purchased. Generally, users play the role of the initiators. The influence of the users in purchasing decisions may vary from minor to Continue reading
Industrial Marketing
Industrial marketing, also known as business-to-business (B2B) marketing, is a branch of communications and sales that specializes in providing goods and services to other businesses, rather than to individual customers.
Publicity and Public Relations in Industrial Marketing
Publicity When any significant news about a product is made known to the people through a published medium like radio, television, newspaper or otherwise, such kind of act is known is publicity. Publicity has very high credibility in the eyes of organizational buyers as the sponsor does not pay anything for publicity and it is not a part of any promotional program. It is the least costly promotional alternative available for the company that is very effective. Publicity helps to generate sales leads and improves relationship with customers. Technical articles published in trade journals about a company or products with the identity of authors (such articles are called as signed articles) improve the image of the company and the products. They form as a good source of information for customers. Though publicity is free, there are some associated costs attached to it. The costs incurred are for reasons like obtaining Continue reading
Need for Advertising Agencies in Industrial Marketing
An Advertising agency is an organisation whose business consists in the acquisition of the right to use space of time in advertising media and the administration of behalf of the advertisers of advertising appropriations made by them. It renders advice and creative services for its clients. It does not sell any tangible products, but sells creative talents and past experience. Thus it is an organisation specially created for rendering services in advertising. The services of an advertising agency in general can be summarized as follows: It makes the advertisements pleasant and serves the purpose. It can get the advertisements published at the appropriate times. It can help the advertiser in the preparation of the advertising budget. It can free the advertiser from the botheration of contacting the media owners of all types as and when necessary. It can do market research for the advertiser at a lesser cost. It can Continue reading
Medias used in Industrial Advertising
While some industrial advertisers use traditional consumer media when they serve their advertising objectives, their choices generally center on whether to use print media (business magazines, trade publications, and industrial directions), direct marketing (direct mail, telemarketing, catalogs, and data sheets), or some combination thereof. General Business and Trade Publications General business and trade publications are classified as either horizontal or vertical. Horizontal publications deal with specific functions, tasks, or technologies and cut across industry lines. Vertical publications are directed toward a specific industry and may be read by almost anyone from the person on the assembly line to the company president. The choice of one or the other, or both, is dictated by the desire to penetrate a particular industry, reach common influencers across industries, or optimize the goals of reach and frequency. General business publications (e.g., Fortune, Business Week, and The Wall Street Journal) tend to be read by Continue reading
Cost-Benefit Analysis in Industrial Pricing
To formulate an appropriate industrial pricing strategy it is very essential to have an analysis of the costs and benefits of the industrial product from the customer’s point of view. The benefits can be grouped into soft and hard benefits. Soft benefits includes those benefits which are very difficult to assess, such as customer training, warranty period, customer services, company reputation etc. Hard benefits are the physical attributes of the products such as production rate of machine, rejection rate of component and price/performance ratio. The costs for an industrial customer mean price plus other expenses that are incurred in purchasing and using the product. For example, the cost of a new oil refinery machine purchased by oil mill includes price, freight, installation, energy usage, repair and maintenance. The cost of production stoppage due to failure of machine may also be included while calculating the machine cost though it is difficult Continue reading
Uses of Industrial Advertising
Rarely is advertising employed by itself in the industrial arena. The complexity of most industrial products, coupled with buyers’ expectations and unique information needs, requires personal contact. It is not possible, however, for sales people to make contact with all the various individuals who may be involved in a purchasing decision. In fact, studies have indicated that on the average for every ten buying influencers, salesperson reaches only three to four. Not only is industrial advertising an effective means of reaching inaccessible or unknown buying influencers, it creates awareness, enhances the effectiveness of the sales call, increases the overall efficiency of the selling effort, and is an important ingredient in creating and maintaining demand at the distributor level. Reaching Buying Influences: It is not uncommon for industrial sales people to be unaware of individuals within a firm who may be in a position to exert influence on a purchasing decision. Continue reading