Organizational Buying Behavior of Biotech-Oriented Academic Institutions : A Case Study of Sartorius Stedim Biotech

Abstract: Lately the pharmaceutical industry is confronted with newly emerging needs which puts firms under a high cost pressure. As a result pharmaceutical equipment provider such as Sartorius Stedim Biotech (SSB) are affected by that in a similar way trying to deliver products and services that promise best value for money. A so-called go-to-market project should serve to evaluate each customers’ sales potential in order to allocate resources accordingly. Hence,  ome market segments such as the “academic market” which is comprised of research institutes and academic institutions (=colleges and universities) with biotech-oriented study programs needed to be disregarded. Therefore, this thesis investigated the organizational buying behavior of academic institutions in order to advise the product management department Fermentation Technologies (FRT) how to improve marketing efforts of the Biostat® A to get it marketed and sold, given the go-to-market limitations. To find a solution to this problem, a case study of FRT and their Biostat® A at SSB has been conducted. Data has been collected through five company interviews, six customer interviews with different institutions as well as through a customer survey with overall 69 respondents 59 from Germany, 10 from the UK). This study identified that there is a current misbalance of the Biostat® A’s marketing mix. Further, the academic institutions’ bioreactor procurement process could be outlined and everal aspects influencing their buying behavior were identified. In addition it was found that academic institutions demand the personal contact to their bioreactor suppliers, not wanting to be visited on a regular basis while using the internet as a main information source. Based on above findings, the advice to FRT is to establish a direct marketing approach with telesales to realize a market pull. Given the go-to-market limitations this presents a solution that creates a direct customer response, establishes customer relationships and is of a cost-efficient nature.