How to Approach the Customers' Customers in Business-to-Business Markets

CHICAGO, Sept. 12, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The article "Looking Beyond the Horizon: How to Approach the Customers' Customers in Business-to-Business Markets" presents specific ways how suppliers in business-to-business markets may account for customers' customers in their marketing strategy.

In business-to-business practice, suppliers not only conduct marketing activities to their direct customers but also to their customers' customers to stimulate demand. The article provides three different approaches how to reach indirect customers: via direct customer downstream support, cooperative indirect customer marketing, and independent indirect customer marketing. The authors scrutinize different circumstances such as power constellations and product value contributions along the value chainunder which the specific approaches are successful. Also the authors point out how a supplier may internally professionalize its marketing approaches to indirect customers to further leverage the value capture from this strategy. Specifically, suppliers should deploy appropriate resources that are responsible for the observation of and the marketing to those downstream markets and adapt its customer relationship management and performance measurement systems to account for indirect customers. The analysis appears in the September 2014 issue of the American Marketing Association's Journal of Marketing.

"It was important to elaborate on how and when business-to-business suppliers may approach indirect customers with marketing activities. Specifically, indirect customer marketing represents an interesting opportunity to gain valuable information on downstream market characteristics, create product preferences among indirect customers, and ultimately stimulate derived demand. Existing research has provided only little guidance on how to capture the potential of marketing at those distant market stages. Our aim was to provide a step-by-step roadmap for a B2B supplier's entry into indirect customer marketing that encompasses specific approaches as well as implementation directions" as the authors Christian Homburg, Halina Wilczek, and Alexander Hahn state.

A major key learning of the authors' work is that suppliers in business-to-business markets should extend their understanding of the customer so that it encloses direct and indirect customers. Also they need to stepwise professionalize their indirect customer marketing through deployment of internal resources. In so doing, suppliers may strengthen relationships to direct and indirect customers, find new business opportunities, and upgrade their financial performance.

About the AMA
About the American Marketing Association:
The American Marketing Association (AMA) is the professional association for individuals and organizations who are leading the practice, teaching, and development of marketing worldwide. Learn more at ama.org.

Contact: Christopher Bartone – 312.542.9029 – [email protected]

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SOURCE American Marketing Association