How Alliance Managers Sell Products with their own competitors?An Exploratory Research

Estelle PELLEGRIN-BOUCHERERFI

Christophe FOURNIERCR2M

Hervé FENNETEAUCR2M

Université Montpellier 1

Some examples of coopetition

• Retailing : alliances between big and small firms (to reduce costs and better negociate with major outlets). Concerns Food, textile, hygiene etc.

• Financial Industry : Credit Card

• IT : Oracle, IBM, HP (hardware and software), + consulting firms sell together their products to their clients (especially in B to B marketing)

Agenda

• What is Coopetition ?

• Representation of the concept of coopetition in the selling area

• Research Question: case 1 ?

• Methodology

• Results & Implications

• Contribution and limits

What is Coopetition ?

• Case of alliance between competitors• Differences with an alliance :

– cooperate AND compete at the same time• In literature about alliance

– KSF are trust & cooperation• In literature about coopetiton

– KSF are cooperating & competing

The situation

• According to our knowledge, very few theorical and empirical studies in the sales field,

• Implementation of a sales coopetition strategy raises sales management questions

Representation of the concept of coopetition in the selling area

BUYER

Firm A

TraditionalSales force

Alliance Manager A Alliance Manager B

Traditional Salesforce

Firm B

Sales Force A Sales Force B

Case 1

BUYER

Firm A

TraditionalSales force

Alliance Manager A

Alliance Manager B

Traditional Salesforce

Firm B

Sales Force A Sales Force B

How will cooperation between these two alliances mangers work?

BUYER

Firm A

TraditionalSales force

Alliance Manager A

Alliance Manager B

Traditional Salesforce

Firm B

Sales Force A Sales Force B

Case 2

How managing this special category of salespeople or alliance managers ?

BUYER

Firm A

TraditionalSales force

Alliance Manager A

Alliance Manager B

Traditional Salesforce

Firm B

Sales Force A Sales Force B

Case 3

How to manage a global sales force intra-firm ?

Research Question: case 1 ?

• how alliance managers, who are in charge of commercial and marketing alliances, manage to create joint commercial solutions with their competing partners and

• how they promote the solutions of their own companies to these particular partners

Methodology

• Four Cases Studies

• IT area

• 2 successes, 2 failures

Results

• Factors of Success– Joint solutions suit customers needs, – long term relationships, – reactivity

• Factors of Failure– lack of coopetition strategy at the firm level,– internal organization weaknesses, – lack of alliance management– personal dysfunctions, – change in the environment (legal, economic etc.)

Implications and Ways of research

- The influence of customers on the type of sales (coopetition or not)

- This type of relationships (coopetition) is more and more frequent, specially in B to B marketing but it is always difficult and complex.

- There are a lot of failure because when the deals does not work the relationship is stopped and when the deal works it is always difficult to share the cake

- The importance to get salespeople involved in that type of relationship LWT ?

Contribution

• Some existing literature about commercial alliances

but

• Coopetition is a new theorical field and specific case of alliance

• Very few about sales management and coopetition

Limitations & Futur Researches

• External validity : study other situations

• Study the two other cases (2 &3)

• Other ways of data collection (network

analysis, ethnographic methodology

Thank You Very Much !!