Free Business Dissertations - Unlike In Consumer Marketing, Business Marketing Involves Entities That Are
Unlike in consumer marketing, business marketing involves entities that are considerably more complex that individual consumers. One key reason for this is simply that an organization’s purchase involves multiple individuals such as buyers, end-users and operations or finance department personnel. Also, business purchases are often either made by, on average, more sophisticated buyers and/or more users with greater sophistication or demanding usability specifications. Yet another key difference is that purchases are seldom isolated events. There is an ongoing service requirement, a set-up and delivery component or simply the opportunity for a potentially infinite corporate lifetime of additional purchases.
This last difference brings into the discussion the idea that business marketing has much to do with relationships. These relationships should be mutually profitable, and are frequently long-term in nature. Because of these facts, organizational theorists have utilized concepts that had previously been more likely to be a part of a discourse in the social sciences.
Utilizing the framework that businesses marketing does not take place in a vacuum, theorists describe the structure surrounding a firm as a network of relationships. These relationships may be short-term, long-term, supplier, retailer, or construed by virtually any other construct that is useful to elucidate the environment that a firm operates in with regards to power, structure and players and the resulting opportunities and threats.
With regards to Cloverbrook, there are a number of observations in regards to its market or network structure:
Overall, Cloverbrook perceives its relationships down the supply-chain as being adversarial in nature. This is evidenced by the instances in which there were defects in that there is an attitude that seems to be biased against finding the root cause of the problem. It seems that there is a lack of understanding that an error causes problems ‘down the line’ and not just simply grievances on Cloverbrook.
Cloverbrook currently suffers from an asymmetric balance of power that is not in its favor in regards to the mutual worth that is has with it three key customers. This is evidenced by the forced compliance that occurs on collaboration issues and by the relative ‘fear’ that Cloverbrook seems to exhibit in relating to these customers.
Potential collaborations with customers seems to be viewed from a cost versus and opportunity perspective with only the short term gain considered.While it is possible that the other firm is simply wanting ‘something for nothing’, most attempts at collaboration are likely a genuei attempt by the other party at cementing and improving a long-term relationship.
Cloverbrook, as a firm, seems to have an outlook that price is the key determinant of why they maintain customer relationships.
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