BUS2324 - B2B Marketing: Customer Segments, IKEA, Marketer Roles

This report examines business-to-business (B2B) marketing, focusing on different customer segments and the roles of marketers. It identifies three primary types of business market customers: commercial, institutional, and governmental, providing examples of how each segment interacts with a company like IKEA. The report also analyzes the four crucial roles played by a marketer: instigator, innovator, integrator, and implementer, explaining their responsibilities in driving business growth and fostering customer relationships. The analysis uses IKEA as a case study to illustrate practical applications of B2B marketing principles across various customer types and marketer functions.

Business to Business
Marketing
Assessment 2

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Table of Contents
Part 1...........................................................................................................................................................2
Part 2...........................................................................................................................................................3
References...................................................................................................................................................4

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Part 1
There are three types of business market customers; they are commercial, institutional, and
governmental.
Commercial marketing:
It is defined as the pitching goods for the corporations as well as for individuals that contribute
towards the growth of the firm. The primary goal of commercial marketing is mainly to develop
the relationship between the client and the product (Ozanne and Ozanne, 2016). Moreover, it is
achieved by creating and developing the brand image of the firm which the consumers can relate.
The commercial firms can be divided into flowing categories such as users, OEMs and
producers, wholesalers, and retailers. For example, the products and services offered by IKEA
create value for all its customers (Ikea.com, 2019). The products offered by IKEA like furniture,
glasses, or other products which can be purchased by the customers. The firm is engaged in
providing a high quality of product at affordable prices for all its customers.
Institutional marketing:
The institutional marketing can be considered as the desired process where the larger buyers like
those of hotels, schools purchases products to use for the production of their goods or services.
The consumers in this type of marketing are hospitals, schools, colleges, universities, and
different hotels. These products offered by the firm helps in the execution of the business
processes of the consumers who purchase it. For example, the product that can be acquired by
the consumers is table, chairs, equipment's for hospitals and school, bed-sheets for hotels and
other items which are required to run the businesses of the consumers (Hutt and Walker, 2015).
The products are mainly purchased by the consumers of this market to run their business
processes as per their need.
Governmental marketing:
It mainly involves the different government offices, army, navy, and ordinance factories along
with the other government departments (Hutt and Speh, 2012). It needs to be understood that the
government entities have a limited purchasing budget, and therefore, the price of the products
purchased by this group is crucial. Moreover, based on this, the purchase procedure of the

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consumers of this market is organized. Most of the government organizations, as well as the non-
profit organizations, consist of the issuance of tenders and bids (Swani et al., 2017). Also, these
are considered to be those consumer group which has modified their products considering the
government market. These products can be a bit inferior to meet the expectation of the
consumers. For example, the consumers belonging to this group can purchase the product like
wood, plastic, glass, steel, and furniture to fulfill their desired needs.
Part 2
There are four of the crucial roles played by a marketer; they are instigators, innovator,
integrator, and implementer.
The purpose of an instigator is to bring about or initiate something for the execution of the
concerned business processes (Paul et al., 2018). When business to business occurs, the
instigator should identify, evaluate, and explore more opportunities present throughout the
market.
In case of occurrence of business to business marketing, the innovator expands beyond the
features of the products and functionality to pricing, delivery, engaging the customers, sharing of
risk-rewards and the development of new business models.
The implementer plays vital role to build coalitions as well as it persuades other people to use
purposeful expertise, insights along with the team work instead of authorizing people to get the
work or things done. The implementer enhances the growth of the business throughout the
competitive market areas.
The integrator helps in developing bridges across various organizational silos as well as it
operates to unite them in one path. Moreover, it effectively acts as a translator to make the
insights of consumers relevant as well as meaningful to the employees or the people within the
firm. It also plays the role of a tie-breaker for the leadership team.

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References
Hutt, M.D., and Speh, T.W., 2012. Business marketing management: B2B, 11th ed., South-
Western Publishing Co.
Hutt, M.D., and Walker, B.A., 2015. Bridging the theory-practice gap in business marketing:
Lessons from the field—The JBBM at 21. Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, 22(1-2),
pp.67-72.
Ikea.com. (2019). Well-Designed Affordable Home Furnishings - IKEA. [online] Available at:
https://www.ikea.com/my/en/ [Accessed 19 May 2019].
Ozanne, L.K., and Ozanne, J.L., 2016. How alternative consumer markets can build community
resiliency. European Journal of Marketing, 50(3/4), pp.330-357.
Paul, P., Bhuimali, A., Aithal, P.S. and Bhowmick, S., 2018. Business Information Sciences
emphasizing Digital Marketing as an emerging field of Business & IT: A Study of Indian Private
Universities. IRA International Journal of Management & Social Sciences,(ISSN 2455-
2267), 10(2), pp.63-73.
Swani, K., Milne, G.R., Brown, B.P., Assaf, A.G., and Donthu, N., 2017. What messages to
post? Evaluating the popularity of social media communications in business versus consumer
markets. Industrial Marketing Management, 62, pp.77-87.