The Marketing Challenge for Industrial Companies

Book excerpt: This book discusses the differences between consumer marketing and industrial marketing, as well as the challenges faced when putting each into practice. It identifies important distinctions in terms of product functionality, market research concepts and techniques, market segmentation, pricing, sales force and product launch. Furthermore, it reviews significant variations concerning other issues such as branding, distribution, product development and the organizational structure of the commercial department. Each chapter features both authoritative, novel concepts suited for global application and hands-on protocols. By presenting these concepts and their implementation, this book is the first of its kind in the field to help practitioners avoid using consumer-marketing techniques that could in fact be inappropriate for and detrimental to an industrial company strategy.