Firms Make Common & Lethal Mistake When Selling Products, Notes Penn State Marketing Expert

Firms Make Common & Lethal Mistake When Selling Products, Notes Penn State Marketing Expert

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA-Many companies make a common mistake when selling products, and it can be lethal to any firm's future.

"Many firms continue to give away what could often be the keys to ongoing profitability: service, special support, know-how and other more intangible extras," says Ralph Oliva, an internationally-recognized authority on business-to-business marketing issues and executive director of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets in Penn State's Smeal College of Business.

By giving away the "extras," Oliva warns that firms will find these intangible assets become taken for granted and not counted as being valuable.

"Savvy firms - even those with leading edge products - are beginning to recognize an important truth: you're in a service business or you're out of business. Knowing how to create, market, and harvest the value of services and other 'intangibles' is becoming the key to healthy customer relationships and profitability in this turbulent decade," says Oliva, who had a 23-year career in business-to-business and consumer marketing before joining Penn State.

Firms competing by product alone are subject to ever more rapid copies, alternatives and competition, which increase pressure on price. Some of these firms "bundle in" all sorts of free services, support and extras, assuming that these will ensure customer loyalty, only to find themselves in a constant struggle to remain profitable on the face of ongoing pricing pressure.

"In today's competitive markets, firms must go beyond the product to build and harvest value by offering what they know with what they sell," says Oliva.

The Institute for the Study of Business Markets, a center of excellence in Penn State's Smeal College of Business, is co-sponsoring a business-to business services forum to give attendees the tools, strategies and best practice methods to enable firms to leverage their knowledge base for greater profits. The program, "Building Customer Value and New Profitability---Through Services," will take place July 24-26 in the Philadelphia Airport Marriott. It is being co-presented with Arizona State University's Center for Services Leadership, and features speakers from higher education and business. The speakers include:

• James C. Anderson, Professor of Marketing and Wholesale Distribution & Professor of Behavioral Science in Management at Northwestern University.
• Neeli Bendapaudi, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Ohio State University.
• Steven W. Brown, Chair in Services Marketing and Director of the Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State University.
• Tom Esposito, CEO of The Insight Group, a management consulting firm specializing in helping companies implement profitable high growth services business plans.
• Mike Wiley, General Manager, Integrated Technology Services-Americas, IBM Global Services.

"This is a powerful program that will be especially beneficial to those who work in business-to-business in areas such as strategic planning, marketing, new product and service development, customer service, or service quality management," says Oliva.

This event represents a partnership of two of the country's most respected university centers for advancing successful business strategies to firms across the world.

The Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM) is one of five research centers in the Smeal College of Business, and is networked with researchers, educators and practitioners in business-to-business marketing in companies and universities throughout the world. The ISBM, founded in 1983, is supported by over 60 major industrial corporations, and serves as a clearinghouse for knowledge, tools, techniques and resources for business-to-business marketing. The mission of ISBM is to improve the practice of business-to-business marketing in industry, and to expand research and teaching in business-to-business marketing in academia. They accomplish their mission through three agendas: research, education, and networking and interchange. For business marketing practitioners, the ISBM works to provide leading edge thinking, made practical, just in time.

Arizona State University's Center for Services Leadership (CSL) has been serving as a bridge between the academic community and the business community since 1985 by expanding and enriching expertise on using services as a source competitive advantage. The Center provides companies with executive education, problem focused research and supports the faculty who teach in the ASU MBA Services Marketing and Management specialization.

For more information or to register for the conference, call 814-863-2782 or register online at www.csl.isbm.org .

For more information on the event or to receive press credentials to attend the conference, contact Ralph Oliva at roliva@psu.edu or 814-863-2782.