Chemical S&M Effectiveness is the uncontested best-seller and leading event of the JFG chemical pipeline for the past two years. Like quality management, the commercial area (marketing, sales and customer service) is vital to successfully differentiate a company from its competitors in today’s highly challenging and fast-changing environment. Innovation in the chemical industry is on a fast cycle.

This forum proposes to explore in further depth the realm of competitive intelligence, to demonstrate by meaningful case studies how key differentiators (price, brand, communication and sales force characteristics) can be used with increased effectiveness to create competitive advantage. The market is dominated by the paradigm of value which has replaced that of the product – leading companies now focus on “value sales” meant to create customer loyalty rather than customer satisfaction. Customer perception is crucial to this – and the ways in which this perception is fostered and modeled by the marketing and sales executives are quite diverse, providing a fertile ground for effective benchmarking.

PLUS: 2 pre-conference workshops MANAGING KEY DIFFERENTIATORS (24th September)

In an industry where product quality and performance are increasingly levelled up by technological advances, differentiation by market-related factors is crucial for commercial success. These workshops will focus on two groundbreaking areas of great potential which have been insufficiently well understood or applied by chemical manufacturers: branding and pricing.