Trade shows and exhibitions are effective promotional strategies for industrial marketing for several reasons: 1) They allow companies to efficiently introduce new products to a large audience and make direct sales. 2) They facilitate establishing valuable personal contacts with new customers as well as key decision makers. 3) They provide opportunities to display and demonstrate products, evaluate competitors, discover new suppliers/distributors, and generate sales leads - helping salespersons close sales with fewer calls.

1. BUSINESS MARKETING
M.Com II Semester
Important Questions
Dr. K V N Lakshmi
M.Com, M.Phil, PHD, NET

2. 1. Significance of CRM in contemporary business
environment
Components of CRM applications:
Sales force automation and sales management
Customer support system (customer integration
management)
Marketing function
Stages of Development of CRM:
1990-96, 97-02, 03 nowards
Benefits of CRM:
Unified customer base
Retaining customers
Acquiring customers

3. 2. Key fomulating strategies at
business unit level
• Defining Business unit’s mission
• Scanning the external environment
• Analysis of the internal environment
• Developing objectives and goals
• Formulating strategies for achieving the goals
• Preparing programme or action-plan from the
strategies
• Implementing the strategies and action plan
• Monitoring results and taking corrective actions

4. 3. Types of control
• Strategic Control(long term marketing
goals)top mamnagement
• Annual plan control(to examine annual goals
are being achieved) Top and /middle mgmt
• Efficiency control(How resources are
used)Middle management
• Profitability control(Where firm is making and
losing money) head of marketing

5. 4. Strategic Planning at Corporate
Level
• Corporate mission statement
• Corporate objectives and goals
• Defining SBU
• Allocation of resources
– BCG Model(Stars, Cashcows, Question marks,Dogs)
– GE-Multifactor matrix(Market attractiveness, Business
strength)
• Developing corporate strategies(Market
penetration, Product development strategy,
market Development Strategy, Diversification
Strategies)

6. 5. Diversification Strategies
• Concentric Diversification:New product in the
existing line and addressing to new customers
• Horizontal Diversification: Adding new
products which is technologically unrelated to
existing one and addressing to existing
customers
• Conglomerate diversification: Seeking new
products, new markets unrelated to firms
existing product or technology or markets.

7. 6. Industrial Demand
• Derived Demand
• Fluctuating demand
• Stimulating Demand
• Joint demand
• Cross elasticity of demand
• Reverse elasticity of demand
• Bull-Whip effect

8. 7. Types of business customers
• Government customers
• Commercial enterprises
• Institutional customers
• Cooperative societies

9. 8. Classification of industrial products
and services
Materials and parts(raw materials, component
parts, manufactured materials)
Capital items( installations/heavy equipment,
accessories/light equipment, plant and
building)
Supplies and services(paint, oil, building
maintenance services)

10. 9. Lead users method in new product
development
Lead user method was developed by professor Eric von hippel at MIT.
It is based on the empirical realization that innovations are often not
initiated by manufacturers, but that users are often the driving
force behind developments. So-called lead users are involved in this
development process at the earliest possible stage. These are
progressive users or inventors, pioneers in their field, who feel the
needs before they will have the masses tomorrow.
Four stages of lead user project:
1. Form your internal project team(with Power promoter, Specialist
promoter, Process promoter-product manager)
2. Specify the search field and set Lead user profile
3. Find relevant Lead users(the one who is one step ahead of market
and take advantage of the innovation)
4. The lead user conference generates solutions.(source: angelahensb)

11. 10. Two dimensional perceptual
mapping and brand positioning
• Perceptual mapping is a graphic display explaining the perceptions of
customers with relation to product characteristics.
• Perceptual maps help marketers understand where the consumer ranks
their company in terms of characteristics and in comparison to competing
companies
• It can display consumers ideal points that reflect their ideal combinations
of product characteristics
• When creating a new product, a company should look for a space that is
currently unoccupied by competitors and that has a high concentration of
consumer desire
On the basis of perceptual mapping the marketer decide one of the strategy
options mentioned below:
• 1. maintain or continue the product and marketing strategy
• Modify the product or change strategy
• Eliminate or drop
• Add new product or product line

12. 11. Technology adoption life cycle
• Innovators(2 ½%)
• Early adopters(13 ½ %)
• Early Majority(34%)
• Late majority(34%)
• Laggards(16%)

13. 12. Pricing objectives influencing pricing decisions
• Survival: A short term objective is survival if capacity is under
utilised or unsold finished products have piled up. Pricing strategy
a) business firm reduces price b) the pricing will cover variable cost
and a part of fixed cost
• Maximum short term profits: a) Select that price that gives
maximum profits b)the company following this do not consider
competitors reactions and legal implications.
• Maximum market share: a) price will be as low as possible
b)highest volume will reduce production cost c) low prices
discourage entry of potential competitors
• Maximum market skimming: a)high price at the initial phases b) as
sales slow down, prices are lowered in stages to attract new
customers
• Product Quality Leadership: a) produces superior quality produce
b) charges slightly higher prices than competitors prices and results
in higher profits.

14. 13. Major trends in B2B marketing
1. Recent development is VMS: Vertical marketing system is a form of cooperation between
multiple levels of a distribution channel. The members work together to promote efficiency
and economies of scale in the way products are promoted to customers, credit is provided
to customers and products are inspected and delivered to customers.
2. Companies are adopting multiple channel marketing instead of single channel marketing
i.e., two or more marketing channels
3. In spite of competition and increased cost of operations, large distributors can survive due
to economies of scale but small firms tend to disappear
4. Large distributors are likely to use computers for data processing inventory control, order
processing, payment receivables, customer billing.
5. The importance of distributors or dealers will increase due to increasing costs of inventory
carrying and payment receivables from customers
6. Intermediaries will increase their technical competence and product knowledge by
employing and training sales representatives thus trend is towards product specialization
by distribution channels
7. As a result of increase in the size of an intermediary, performance of more functions or
services and a better hold on customers the trade discount to distributors or commissions
or manufacturers representatives will go up.

15. 14. What is Channel Design? explain
• Developing channel objectives
• Analyzing channel constraints
• Analyzing channel tasks
• Identifying the channel alternatives
– Selective distribution
– Intensive distribution
– Exclusive distribution
• Evaluating channel alternatives
– Economic factor
– Control factor
– Adaptive factor
– Superior factor
• Selection of channel structure

16. 15. Why Decision support system is
prioritorized over BMIS
A DSS is and integrated set of computer tools
allowing a decision maker to interact directly
with computer to retrieve information useful
in making semi structured and unstructured
decisions.
It is an interactive computer system that is easily
accessible to, and operated by non computer
specialists to assist them in planning and
decision making functions.

17. DSS functions include models and
tools for:
1. Sensitivity analysis: decision makers can explore
changes in a strategic variable such as price and
model its impact on demand or competitive
behavior.
2. What if analysis: can be easily accomplished
with a spread sheet. Revenues and costs can be
manipulated to show the impact of each
variable on profit and cash flows
3. Goal setting: analysis focuses on the desired
result and builds the resource base necessary to
accomplish the goal.

18. DSS functions include models and
tools for:
4. Exception reporting: Analysis looks for results that exceed
or fall short of stated goals or benchmarks.
5. Forecasting models: econometric models are used to
analyze time series data for the purpose of predicting
future sales and market share levels.
Components of DSS
a. Database b. Statistics c. Decision models d. display
An increasing number of business marketing firms are adding
DSS to BMIS to help in solving unstructured problems and
for making better decisions in complex market situations.
Source(https://www.scribd.com marketing information
systems)

19. 16. Organizational Buying Behavior
Models
1. Webster and Wind Model:
• Environmental variables
• Organisational variables
• Buying centre variables
• Individual variables
• buying decision process

20. Organizational Buying Behavior
Models
2. The sheth model of business buyer behaviour
3. Choffray and lilien model: helps to
conceptualize the group decision process and
also integrates the important aspects of
organizational buying process.

21. “Trade shows and Exhibitions are
considered the best promotional strategies
in industrial marketing”. justify
The benefits from Trade shows(Exhibition):
1. An opportunity to introduce new products to a large audience in a short
duration
2. Establishing personal contacts with new customers
3. Establishing contacts and increasing company awareness with key
members of decision making units who cannot otherwise be reached
4. Making direct sales
5. Display and demonstration of products
6. Evaluating competitors products
7. Discovering new suppliers and distributors
8. Obtaining new product ideas
9. training for new sales persons
10. Generating new sales leads which help sales persons to close
sales(getting orders) with substantially less number of sales call