Abstract

Increased competition in the 1990s forced forest products companies to re-evaluate their business models. Our paper explores forest product marketing by investigating capability-based value propositions that differentiate companies among selected customer accounts. We first utilize a mixed-methodology approach for: 1) identifying the product and service needs of customers, and 2) investigating the prevailing and prospective capability sets among wood-industry companies as a basis for satisfying customer requirements. We proceed by linking the customer needs with the satisfying set of capabilities to form a value proposition, which is tested through customer and industry surveys. Finally, we analyze the process of developing the suggested capability-based value proposition by conducting a comparative case study between a Scandinavian and an Anglo-Saxon company operating in the U.K. market. Our findings show the importance of tailor-made value propositions for each customer segment based on a careful selection of capabilities. Each capability set includes parts that are common to the whole industry, differentiation occurring through either restructuring existing capabilities or by developing novel ones. The optimal capability set is a compromise between customer requirements and industry imperatives, maximizing long-term and short-term revenues

Published in

Conference

XXII IUFRO World Congress

SLU Authors

• Stendahl, Matti

  • Department of Forest Products, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Forest Science


Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/6264