Online or Offline?

Abstract

The increased competitive environment in the construction equipment industry, and the rapid development within IT has resulted in new tools to more effectively communicate messages between business partners. An extranet has become a popular IT tool for companies in the industry to deliver industrial promotion activities electronically, instead of in traditional printed format. The main problem of the thesis was to investigate how a MNC in the construction equipment industry can deliver industrial promotion activities electronically, to its dealers, and how this will affect its dealer relationships. The thesis is based on our case company Volvo CE, which is one of the top global actors in the industry. In order to solve our main problem, we developed a model comprising four areas of investigation. The purpose of the model is to provide the initiator with the necessary information for choosing a strategy of how to most effectively deliver industrial promotion activities. Our main conclusion is that there is no obvious answer to how a MNC in the construction equipment industry can deliver industrial promotion activities electronically. Although, we found that some industrial promotion activities have higher online potential than others, the decision is dependent on the specific case in question. Furthermore, we concluded that in our case study it is too early to say how electronic delivered promotion activities affect the dealer relationships. However, we found extranets as having high potential to strengthen dealer relationships.