Aspen DrudeFebruary 16, 2016B2B AssignmentMarketing Fundamentals Dr. Harriette Bettis-Outland10435 MAR3023 201601

I chose Nalco Champion Engineering as my B2B company to interview on their

marketing practices. The man that I spoke to was Brad Mason, a marketing executive within the

company. Nalco Champion Engineering is owned by Ecolab, which is the global leader in water,

hygiene, and energy technologies and services. Nalco Champion sells chemicals to companies

such as Chevron, BP, and Exxon. My interview with Mr. Mason is below:

Do you have a written marketing plan within your company?- I can’t say that we have a marketing plan for the whole company, but I can say that we

create marketing plans for each project. Even if there was a company marketing plan, I don’t think it would have any impact on my department.

Do you have a Mission Statement? If so, what is it?- We do have a mission statement. We actually have one for both Nalco Champion and

Ecolab. "Our mission is to be the leading global innovator, developer and provider of cleaning, sanitation and maintenance products, systems, and services. As a team, we will achieve aggressive growth and fair return for our shareholders. We will accomplish this by exceeding the expectations of our customers while conserving resources and preserving the quality of the environment." – Ecolab. Nalco has more of a vision statement: Our vision keeps us focused on what we strive for – to be the global leader in water, hygiene and energy technologies and services; providing and protecting what is vital: clean water, safe food, abundant energy and healthy environments.

What/who is your primary target market?- Our primary target market is refineries. They are a downstream market for chemicals.

What is the difference between downstream and upstream?- A downstream market is basically the processing market. Any kind of refinery or

business that manufactures chemicals is going to be downstream. Upstream is where they actually do the drilling. Any kind of drilling rig, oil exploration, fracking, or pulling oil out of the ground is going to be in the upstream category.

How do you segment your market? Has the segmentation strategy changed over time?

- We segment our market based on the industry and what is within that industry. We then segment it further based on geography and the businesses there. Then we go even further to segment it into what kind of services they provide. And lastly we segment it into upstream, midstream, or downstream. Our upstream and midstream both have various organizations that we sell to, and then they sell to other businesses and customers. Downstream sells only to refineries and petrochemical businesses and then from there they sell to customers and businesses. However, we also go by tiers, which is basically just saying how important a company’s business is to our company. We have tier one which is going to be our big companies that care about the environment and are highly ethical. Since we are an environmental company, we want our most important customers to be that way too. Tier two is a medium sized company that is mostly ethical, and tier three is a company that is just worried about money. They may be ethical, but probably not. These companies are mostly in China. We take these tiers and separate them into high, medium, and low values as well. The high companies actually pay us extra for a job well done, whereas the low companies don’t care as much. We started this system in the 80s with a large focus on supermajors in the past 20 or 30 years. Basically a supermajor is a blue chip stock company such as Chevron or Exxon that is diversified and will grow. We mainly focus on Tier one high customers, as they are the most ethical and make us the most money within all of our business. We definitely care about the smaller businesses such as Valero or Tesoro, but they are not supermajors and aren’t very diversified. They would be considered superregional customers, because they are still important. We also have Holly Refining but it is small and only in America. We call this a national customer because it is only in one country. Most of the time national customers are government owned. China for example has a monopoly of two gas stations throughout the whole country.

Do you have international customers?- Nalco Champion is actually worldwide with the exception of Antarctica due to the laws

there that we are currently trying to surpass. We have a list of the exact places that we are in on our website, but we have thousands of places that we are in, so I couldn’t name them all.

Do you actually know the NAICS code(s) for the industries that you do business in?- I have no idea. We are in so many places that mostly our administrative staff would

handle things like that.

What are the greatest environmental hurdles to overcome?- Well, on the refining side, water is a big deal. If there is a shortage of water that causes

us a lot of problems. We have issues with the constant change in regulations, global warming, fuel standards changing, and having to change the way we create fuel constantly. There are so many new things that we have to look at every day.

Who are your primary competitors within your market?- We have Baker-Hughes that is a huge competitor in our upstream market. GE plays a

large competitor on our downstream.

What are your greatest strategic advantages over your competition?- Definitely the size of Nalco Champion. We are already in every country and we do both

processing and water. Baker-Hughes doesn’t do water very well, so we have that over them. GE doesn’t do upstream at all. Therefore, we have a great advantage because we are substantially larger and we do both upstream and downstream.

Do you conduct market research? If so, how/when/how often? In-house or out-sourced?- We do some market research but it is outsourced. We do things such as buying into

market consortiums, technical research, and forecasting. We do this year round so that we can get a better understanding of what’s happening in the industry.

Thank you so much for your time.

My interview with Mr. Mason went very well, and he was very helpful. He taught me a

lot about this particular industry, and I will in turn be looking at this company for employment

in the future.