How to balance the B's and C's. A case study on how business-to-business companies can increase derived demand

Abstract

Background Today, business-to-business companies are becoming increasingly consumer-driven, wanting to increase derived demand from their end-consumers. In this master thesis we set out to find tendencies that occur in business-to-business companies and turn them into tactical suggestions for companies to use in trying to increase derived demand. The thesis is based on a case study done at the business-to-business company ASSA OEM. Most business-to-business marketing textbooks define derived demand, explain how it complicates demand forecasting, and argue that business marketers should look at both their immediate customers and the downstream markets served by them. However, they fail to go beyond general observations and offer insight into the consequences of derived demand, the managerial challenges it causes and solutions to deal with them. Information was gathered through a combination of literature studies, workshops and interviews with employees from our case company. We also interviewed actors from within the case company's supply chain, its potential customers and end-consumers.

Result Today, business-to-business companies want to increase derived demand from their end-consumers. However, creating derived demand means thinking and collaborating in new ways within the supply chain and with outside actors. Companies are often apprehensive when it comes to collaborating with customers. This is because they are concerned of other customers within the supply chain getting upset and feeling like the collaboration partner is a favoured customer. Research also shows that end-consumers do not know enough about the product to fully understand what to ask for at the time of purchase. In our result we give tactical suggestions based on a number of discoveries that we have made, as for how our case company can work with increasing derived demand.

Conclusions The thesis contributes to the theoretical field of business-to-business marketing and strategy implementation in that we give tactical suggestions, grounded in strategic knowledge, as to how business-to-business companies can work wih creating derived demand. We also give suggestions on how to implement the tactical suggestions.