The Marketing Challenge for Industrial Companies

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. 

Dr. Claudio Saavedra is a Professor of Advanced Industrial Marketing at NORDAKADEMIE Graduate School, Hamburg. Professor Saavedra has also conducted teaching and workshops for US-American Louisville University in Panama and for Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. In addition, he has been invited as a speaker in international seminars in conjunction with other global Industrial Marketing Centres, such as triple-accredited Grande École EMLYON Business School in France and The Corporate Development Institute in North Carolina, USA.

He has also been actively involved in business through international consultancy and direct experience as a senior manager in industrial companies for over 15 years. His prior experience in line management and his on-going consulting practise has proved to be highly useful for the real-world applicability of his academic thinking.

As a researcher, he has developed novel concepts and B2B marketing techniques for practitioners. Among these are: Industrial Market Research (© The Discovery Team), Industrial Market Segmentation, Technical Product Development, Technical Product Market Launching, Industrial Distribution, Technical Product Branding, Pricing in Industrial Markets, and Business to Business relationship. He has authorship in topics such as intercompany relationship metric bonding and the metrical evaluation of industrial salesforce performance.

After his Bachelor education in Chile and New York and his Master's Degree in a co-joint programme with Wharton Business School, Pennsylvania, USA, Claudio Saavedra obtained his Ph.D. from Dartmouth College, USA. He later pursued post-doctoral work at Université de Genève in Switzerland.