Weaknesses of Chosen Method

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Empirical Study

In this section the empirical study will be presented. In order to get a broad perspective, information have been collected from the illustrative corporation, several interviews, and one expert interview. All questions asked can be seen in appendix 1, 2, and 3.

Illustrative Corporation Interview
Garantell

Interviewee: Kristin Hallgard, Marketing Director, 16th of April, 2014.
Garantell is a corporation that sells most of their products on export and most of their rela-tionships are maintained by telephone contact, but they also meet customers at fairs. Every seller have a goal of how many hours they should spend on maintaining relationships over telephone.

  1. Hallgard says that she do not use social media in private, but have a LinkedIn account that she uses in business purpose for recruiting. This account is not used to scout competitors and neither for building and maintaining relationships. K. Hallgard means that many of their customers, which is primary located in Germany, use social media platforms but she also says that Germany is behind Sweden when it comes to using social media platforms. She states that Facebook has been used in Sweden for a long time while in Germany it is still in its early stage. Another reflection she states is that a corporation nowadays only reach about two percent of their target group through Facebook in Sweden. This causes problem for Garantell since the developing stages of using Facebook differs from Sweden compared to Germany. She states that some social media platforms might be useful to reach customers in some countries but it can be waste of time in other countries. According to K. Hallgard, the easiest way of connecting through social media to their German customers might be through Facebook but this media is less useful when it comes to, for example, the United Kingdom. Further she does not think that social media are integrated as a work task in other countries, to the same extent as in Sweden, which also can be seen as a barrier.
    The purpose for Garantell when using social media is to reach existing customers and main-taining relationships. They see social media as a complementary part of their existing mar-keting strategy. Another state K. Hallgard makes is that they might be able to reach corpo-rations through social media that they have processed for several years, but never have man-aged to process them as customers.
    Garantell is thinking about using Instagram, Twitter and YouTube as a part of their market-ing strategy. Instagram and Twitter will primary be used for publishing pictures and writing short descriptions of the corporation’s products. YouTube will mainly be used for videos of product descriptions. For the moment K. Hallgard does not think that LinkedIn is appropri-ate since the main focus there is private persons and not corporations. Even though they do not plan to integrate LinkedIn in their marketing strategy, K. Hallgard sometimes use the platform for person searching when she is about to contact a corporation.
    Hallgard thinks that Garantell can strength their corporation brand and image by using social media. She further mentions that a disadvantage by using social media is unpredictable criticism.
     Corporations Interviewed
    Tenzo AB
    Interviewee: Sandra Frylén, Marketing Communicator, 4th of April, 2014.
    Tenzo AB is an international warehouse and furniture corporation with headquarter located in Smålandsstenar, Sweden. The corporation operates in a B2B environment and most of their customers are international, only five percent of their selling occurs in Sweden. Tenzo AB conducts their own production, lacquering and packaging. They have 80 employees and a few subsidiaries abroad.
    To maintain relationships with other corporations, most conversations occur through e-mail or phone calls. Within marketing, they establish the relationships through the sales persons. The sellers are the face of the corporation. To complement, they also use e-mails, folders and sometimes their website. It is used to strength the brand, but most customers do not visit the website continuously and therefore they do not focus on using the website in a relationship approach.
    The organization overall do not use social media, but the designers use it in purpose to search for trends within the industry. Social media platforms are not used in Tenzo’s marketing strategy, but sometimes it happens that employees use their private accounts, to search for anything written about the corporation on different social media platforms. S. Frylén also comments that she is friend with some of her suppliers on LinkedIn. Many of Tenzo’s cus-tomers are active on social media platforms since they are B2Corientated. Platforms that are commonly used are Facebook and Instagram, and S. Frylén states that she has seen that people have linked their corporation to different activities on Pinterest. She also comments that no one of their customers seem to use Twitter. S. Frylén says that she think YouTube might be a good marketing channel, but once again, she thinks it is most advantageous for B2C corporations. Another comment that she makes is that LinkedIn might be the most business oriented of them all.
    Frylén do not think that a broader usage of social media would has advantages for the corporation today, but for B2C corporation social media would probably be more useful. She says that corporations within a B2B context is much more about building relationships and she thinks it is difficult to build relations through social media. Today, there is no focus on social media within the marketing strategy, S. Frylén instead says that the next step for the corporation might be press releases.
    Further, S. Frylén states that the corporation will not use social media only because it has become a trend and she thinks it is difficult to see what usage of social media would actually generate in terms of profit. Social media platforms have long been used by customer-orien-tated corporations and it seem to be more advantageous for them. S. Frylén instead sees potentials in the corporation’s intranet. Through certain intranet it is possible to create a corporation profile and chat rooms. There is much lower risk of information leak through intranets compared to share information at social media platforms on the Internet.
    What stops Tenzo from using social media is the uniqueness they offer each of their cus-tomer. Further, information would no longer be secret for different customers. S. Frylén says that social media may be various useful for different industries and that advertising agencies would use social media platforms more widely than industrial corporations. Tenzo perceives it as a risk by using social media since there is a risk of information leak, which can cause product copying. Some products are designed specialized to one customer and no other cus-tomers are allowed to sell this specific product. Since their customers are competitors to one another they see social media as a risk. When showing a product for a customer, that cus-tomer are supposed to feel special and feel that this specific product is designed for them. This can be seen as a competitive advantage. ”The best thing about social media is that it is free. TV commercials do not feel very trustworthy anymore. Social media might be the communication channel of the future but within a B2B context the development is not there yet” (S. Frylén, personal communication, 2014-04-04).

GA Industri

Interviewee: Fredrik Lidbacken, Marketing Manager, 8th of April, 2014.
GA Industri is a private family owned corporation with headquarter located in Smålandsstenar, Sweden. The corporation operates in the steel industry were they buy steel from abroad and sell it within Sweden. Their production occurs close to their head quarter in Smålandsstenar. They have 60 employees and 350 active customers.
The corporation is traditional and most of their relationship marketing occurs through tra-ditional sales efforts by visiting their customers, also phone calls, email and sometimes through their website. F. Lidbacken points out that most of their customers are very tradi-tional which affects the way they maintain relationships with their customers. GA Industri always seeks to create relations with other employees within their customer organizations, except the purchaser since they already have a relation towards GA Industri. F. Lidbacken (personal communication, 2014-04-08) says “we always try to build a relationship with the employees within the production area since we think it is good to know more than just one person in the organization”.
GA Industri’s marketing begins through traditional selling. The corporation does not work specifically with relationship marketing but they do market their corporation through con-tacts with customers. However, GA Industri operates in a traditional industry, which tends to be dominated by men older than 50 years. Several employees, customers, and suppliers do barely know what social media is about. F. Lidbacken states that GA Industri has tried to rejuvenate their organization by hiring a person under 30 years old, who has tried to point out the advantages of social media. The corporation does not use any social media platforms today but their goal is to, within a year, use some kind of social media. F. Lidbacken does not think that any of their customers or suppliers uses some kind of social media and he does further not think that social media can build relationships in a short-term, but in a longer term he thinks it can be useful. He thinks that the industry has to mature before social media can be seen as normal. He also states that social media primarily would be useful when re-cruiting.
There is a desire for using social media within the corporation, but still there is a lack of knowledge. The goal is to, within a year, have a corporate Facebook page. F. Lidbacken claims that if their stakeholders would be more active on social media platforms, it would also be more obvious for GA Industri to be active as well. Though, there is nothing prevent-ing GA Industri from using social media, but once again F. Lidbacken notes that it is an old fashion industry dominated by older men which he thinks is a barrier for the corporation. He also says that if a corporation is registered on different platforms, it is very important to be active and regularly update the information. If the corporation is inactive, it can instead be a disadvantage to be registered on social media platforms.

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Industrikompetens AB

Interviewee: Joanna Engström, Project Manager, 11th of April, 2014.
Industrikompetens is a recruitment agency operating within the industrial industry, and are located in Norrköping, Linköping, Katrineholm and Motala. The owners of Industrikompe-tens are municipalities and corporations within the region. Their customers are both consult-ants, potential staff for the recruitment, but also the corporations they are recruiting for and doing research to. Last year Industrikompetens bought another recruitment agency, Skill Scandinavia AB, operating primarily within the IT/engineering business and now Skill is a subsidiary to Industrikompetens. Industrikompetens and Skill have together 37 employees and about 200 consultants and works with 200-300 different corporations. Together In-dustrikompetens and Skill help other corporations with staff, recruit, provide competence and provide different kinds of research, as for example marketing research.
Every employee at Industrikompetens work with their relationships towards other corpora-tions somehow, but the sellers are the primary relationship creators and maintainers. The recruitment team has good contact with the corporations they recruit for. Industrikompetens works with customer care and employer branding. They try to serve a package where they can provide customers with all their needs, and not only help them with the recruitment. Most contact within B2B occurs in person, and they work different with their specific rela-tions depending on personality. They use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) – system to know which contacts are established, who contacted them last time, when they were in touch, and other important knowledge to maintain a good relationship with their customers. Industrikompetens has a well-established brand within the region and the busi-ness, and many corporations already know the corporation and contact them when they need help. They use advertisement, but the most important is the personal meeting. The adver-tisement is more directed towards the job candidates, but contribute to the brand awareness both for Industrikompetens and the corporations they are recruiting for.

1 Introduction 
1.1 Background
1.2 Specification of Problem
1.3 Purpose
1.4 Delimitations
1.5 Disposition
2 Method 
2.1 Primary Data
2.2 Secondary Data
2.3 Structure
2.4 Weaknesses of Chosen Method
3 Theoretical Framework 
3.1 Business-to-Business Marketing
3.2 Relationship Marketing
3.3 Integrated Marketing Communication
3.4 Social Media
4 Empirical Study
4.1 Illustrative Corporation Interview
4.2 Corporations Interviewed
4.3 Expert Interview
5 Analysis 
5.1 B2B Marketing and Relationships
5.2 Social Media within a B2B Context
5.3 How to Use Social Media
5.4 Summary of Analysis
6 Conclusion
7 Recommendations for Garantell 
8 Further Research
List of References 
Appendix
GET THE COMPLETE PROJECT
Social Media within a B2B context A qualitative study about how industrial corporations can use social media to maintain B2B relationships

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