Industrial/Business Customer

Business marketing organizations normally serve three types of industrial customer. They are:

1. Commercial enterprises.

2. Governmental organization.

3. Institutions.

1. Commercial enterprises: Commercial enterprises are the organizations which buy the products for business, further production etc with a view to earning profit. It can be classified into three categories:

a. Users: Users purchase industrial products or services to produce other goods and services and sell them to the industrial or consumer markets. When purchasing machine tools from general motor then the auto manufacturer is the users.

b. Original equipment manufactures (OEM): OEM Purchases industrial goods to incorporate into the other products and sell them in the industrial or ultimate consumer market. For example: Intel produces the micro processors, and then IBM would be classified as OEM.

c. Dealers and distributors:  Dealer and distributor include those commercial enterprises that purchase industrial goods for resale without changing its form. The distributors accumulate, store and sell a large assortment and goods to industrial users.

2. Governmental organization: To lead the nation govt. needs a lot of material and immaterial resources like office supplies, arms and weapons, fuel, food products, technological know how etc which can be a large market to the industrial marketer.

3. Institutions: Public and private institutions constitute another class of industrial customer such as churches, hospitals, colleges and universities etc. They have different buying patterns, some institutional customers such as public universities have specific purchasing procedures that are rigidly/strictly followed and others follow less standardized approaches.