Sharpening The Distributor Network

Increasingly distributors are replacing direct salesforces in industrial marketing. They cost less, they absolve the manufacturer from the burdens of credit control and they provide a wide geographical spread of stocking points. But, how can the prin ...

Profiling The Competition

It's so easy to do, and so useful, that it's amazing more companies don't do it. Profiling the competition plays an important role in four decision making areas: product planning, setting future strategies, pricing and acquisition policy. ...

Postal Surveys In Industrial Marketing Research

Postal surveys have a very bad image, so much so that by far the majority of industrial marketers dismiss them as being inappropriate as a research technique. However, postal surveys have an important role to play in industrial marketing research as ...

A Guide to Calculating Market Size in China

One of the main objectives for many companies when carrying out research in China is to establish the size of the market. Market size information can be used to gauge the overall size of the opportunity, to prioritize segments of the market for speci ...

Market Research And Sales Managers

The essential element of the sales manager's survival kit is good information, particularly in four areas: the company's sales, the structure of the market, detailed knowledge of buyers and the strengths and weaknesses of the company vis-a-vis the co ...

Market Intelligence

The purposes of this article is to hopefully make your life easier in knowing how to go about gathering market intelligence and what types of market intelligence will deliver useful insight. Here are 3 steps to powerful market intelligence. ...

Image Research In Industrial Marketing

Image is how others see us. It is the cornerstone of the success of any business. If a company's image is right everything else will follow easily. It is important that every company should ask themselves what image they wish to project and at whom. ...

How To Move A Brand Forward

The following article is designed to help create a framework and checklist of areas that every business should consider when developing its brand – it focuses a little more on service businesses than product businesses but the same principles still ...