1. Jeremy Simmons
Dr. Sahagun
Marketing Case 2
February, 25, 2016
The Central Problem for 3M
3M is a strong company that prides themselves on their innovation and product development, 3M
sells more than 50,000 different products world wide which include office supplies, health care,
electronics, and construction. 3M also known as “The Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company”
is a multi-billion-dollar company with over $30billion dollars in annual sales. 3M’s product line includes
popular items like scotch tape, and Post-it notes. If a company has a consistent company growth and sales
profits why are they not the biggest company in the world? Simply put 3M has so many products in so
many markets consumers have no dependence or a deep enough relationship where they will “depend” on
3M’s products. Due to all their variety in products consumers could more easily be convinced to try
another product in that market from a company who only specializes in making that said product. Along
with to big of a market, 3M can not give the time and attention to their consumers as other companies.
While 3M is busy giving their employees a time in the day where they focus on their own products and
innovations (called the “15% percent rule), other companies are building relationships with their
consumers on a more personal level. This builds more reliable customers who will in the long run give
you more profit than consumers that will occasionally need to buy Post-it notes. 3M has completely
missed the idea that it is all about the consumers and not always about coming up with the next new
product. Rather coming up with the next product that will improve the previous product or considerably
help the consumers interested in buying that product. A company becomes the most loved and most
widely bought brand if consumers have an emotional attachment to that company that exceeds product
relations. Its not just about the products being new and exciting, its about building trust, reliability,
innovation, and creativity along side the consumers. 3M does not advertise their products in the way we
see countless commercials for BMWs, Chick-fil-a, Walmart, and Verizon. 3M has not connected with the
consumers themselves enough to make a massive difference in profits. 3M have provided new and useful
products but have never really put a face in the market with more products like it. They seem to strive to
create and imagine new possibilities for products with in the companies imagination but do not reach out
to the biggest creative base—the consumers themselves.
3Ms Possible Alternatives

2. Customer-Centered NewProduct Development, this development process could be what 3M is
looking for in terms of high profit returns. This process includes the customers in the product
development process. The market is all about the customer, but 3M could use their skills of innovation
and product development to bring customer ideas to light. If 3M is willing to listen to customer ideas and
include customer ideas in what 3M calls their “middle science fair”, where they show off their 15 percent
projects. If 3M were to incorporate consumer ideas into their event they could see huge profit returns
from happy customers being satisfied because 3M has targeted, developed, and improved upon an idea of
the consumers. This would lead into the next thing 3M can introduce which is Crowdsourcing, which is
when a company brings in outside sources into the innovation process. This process can bring in great
ideas from outside sources but also spark new ideas on the company itself. Crowdsourcing can be a bring
about powerful new ideas. Another great strategy for 3M to use is Product position, this process focuses
on a value proposition. This is how to create differentiation value for the targeted segment, consumers
define a product on its importance attributes. Customer-relationship Management, this is a system
that gives a company the ability to keep a detailed database on their consumers which allows them to see
carefully manage customer touch points maximizing customer loyalty.
Analysis of the Alternatives
Pros for: Customer-Centered NewProduct Development, can create a new way for 3M to
immerge into their target markets with more accuracy and customer relationships that it could greatly
increase each markets profits. If 3M makes a spin off with their employee science fair event but applied it
with customers where they allow everyday consumers to browse their events and also bring their ideas in
and have 3M employees take a look at them. This will create a connection between the 3M company + its
employees with their targeted consumers. Along with Customer relationship marketing integrated in with
bringing consumer ideas to the surface will create a value in the consumers’ minds that see 3M as a
company focused on what the consumer wants. Cons: This could create a company that is so focused on
the consumer that it never develops anymore new ideas for themselves becoming a consumer run
company. 3M could also get a lot of consumers bringing in useless ideas which would not help 3M to get
any new and useful information to go off of. This would also cost lots of money which 3M does put out
$30 billion in sales yearly, but it would cost a lot of money to fund these events and time get potential
consumers and consumer ideas to present themselves at these events. Pros for Crowdsourcing: this
would allow employees to go out and collect feedback from their consumers in their events and find out
more of what they thought were the better ones and which they thought had the news idea, and which they
thought would have the highest profit potential. Creating an all angle view of what the consumers rate
what products they want and what they see as not this years big thing. Cons: simple the time it would

3. take to get enough employees to walk around events and talk with customers and also how long it would
take to get enough information to help. Pros for Product Position: This can view what customers value
in your product and what do they value in others. This will help 3M to start creating connections between
their products and consumer value. A consumer is going to buy a product a lot on how they value your
products attributes. If 3M can start focusing on their brand along side their products and their ads popping
up showing what they products offer us as consumers, this will create a view of value in customers with
3M. I did not even know that 3M was a company, and now finding out they make scotch tape and post-it
notes is crazy to me. They have such universally sold products but no one even knows who made them.
3M needs to position their brand name out their and get their products in the view of consumers with
creating value with what they offer which is incredible innovation. Cons: 3M has so many products that
if they try and brand them all and create ads and value it will cost loads of money to promote 50,000
different products. Pros for Customer-Relationship Management: 3M could use this system to increase
customer loyalty, which would in turn give them long lasting customers that not only buy their products
regularly but also promote their products positively to other consumers. This can give 3M a start in the
direction of customer marketing, which will put the focus on customers with first keeping relationships
with each buyer and keeping data on them for use in creating products in the future and cratering to each
of their buyers needs. Apple has a very large loyalty base,half of HPU students have Apple computers.
They created a relationship with their consumers, and brought them what they wanted with each new
product and each new product was bigger than the last one. The most profit a company sees that come
from consumers is due to loyalty buyers which are loyal customers that continuously purchase 3M’s
products because of the relationship they have with 3M. Cons: This would take ages for a company’s
product size and market sizes to collect all that data that is needed for Customer relationship
management. It would cost lots of money for 3M to start collecting data for 50,000 product markets.
3M’s Recommended solution
Customer-Centered NewProduct Development: I chose this as the solution for 3M’s problem
because they are to focused on what new and innovated thing they can create,with out really involving
the consumers. 3M has no way of fully involving their consumers at where they are right now, they have
a large amount of markets where it would be to expensive to keep track of all their consumers. 3M needs
to down size their markets before making anymore improvements other then beginning with Customer-
centered New Product Development. This can be easily advertised through social media posts and getting
their brand name out their, along with the customers get to help choose the next big products at the new
“3M’s Consumer innovation conventions” where they will hold certain conventions with employees that

4. go to a few different states or where ever their budget can take them to start holding events where
consumers can see what 3M is testing and what ideas consumers what to see. This will start a slow
relationship build for 3M that still sticks to their motto of going for New innovations but now allows a
larger audience and a relationship to over time build into a loyal consumer base.
3M’s game plan
3M’s CEO Inge Thulin will be the one to announce the new addition as it will be the biggest
influence when he states the company will be taking a new innovational turn by holding their next science
fair like event in a new state with employee’s new product ideas on display, along with the ability for the
consumers to enter each event with ideas they think should be seen by employees of 3M and volunteer
judges that walk around to see what products there are. It can be done in an easy cheap location like a
YMCA gym where they have a large enough space for a predicted first turn out. It will hopefully slowly
build to bigger places and more popular locations. This would probably cost 3M a rental fee for the first
event in a YMCA like gym, paid employees to walk around, advertisement for the event, and fees for
traveling to the event. This would not be a high costly event for 3M to hold since it has high sales profits
already.