Value Merchants: Demonstrating and Documenting Superior Value in Business Markets

Do your salespeople feel under extreme pressure to retain accounts or gain new business at any cost? If so, you may be leaving big money on the table. Consider the integrated-circuit supplier representative who lost $500,000 of potential profit on a single transaction, just to "win" a deal that he would have closed anyway at the higher price.

Do not make price concessions. Become a value merchant instead. In this authoritative book, James Anderson, Nirmalya Kumar, and James Narus explain how companies in business markets can use customer value management techniques to estimate the value of your market offerings, create value propositions that resonate with your customers, and maximize the return you will get on the superior value that you deliver.

Drawing on extensive research and detailed case studies of companies like Sonoco, Tata Steel, and Quaker Chemical, Value Merchants will change the mindset and behavior of your executives, sales management, representatives, and marketers—as well as your customers.

James C. Anderson is the William L. Ford Distinguished Professor of Marketing and Wholesale Distribution at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Nirmalya Kumar is Professor of Marketing and Director of the Centre for Marketing of Aditya V. Birla Indian Centre, London Business School. James A. Narus is a Professor of Business Marketing at the Babcock Graduate School of Management, Wake Forest University.