Authors: Shiming Zhang
1. Background to the Research
Despite its importance, marketing in industrial sectors seems to be in the state of complexity. Companies are increasingly highly interdependent and interconnected within the networks. The collaboration between chemical companies and oil companies are even more complex due to the regulation influences on the business activities. In the PhD project, we will examine how chemical companies, oil companies, regulators and others acquire and represent the marine ecosystem‟ s services in the North Sea as they go about developing, marketing, exchanging, and using chemical and chemistry services to enhance oil and gas production. The study is conducted on industrial marketing between chemical companies and oil companies under the regulation of chemical used in North Sea under the direction of OSPAR or REACH, etc.
Three issues come to mind, first of all, North Sea oil industry is mature, but with the development of chemical industry, chemical companies and oil companies should be responsible for ecosystem problems coursed by the spills-overs of chemical products. Organizations like OSPAR or REACH is to improve the protection of human health and the environment through identifying the intrinsic properties of chemical products. It has great impact on the market exchanges between chemical companies and oil companies. On one hand these organizations try to enhance the innovation and competitiveness of the chemistry industry, on the other hand they set regulations to help manage the risks from chemical and provide information for the chemical companies.
Secondly, chemical companies and oil companies exchange under the directions of ecosystem services. Market actors and regulators have not designed a single clear market for ecosystem services. We are aiming to address how markets are shaped for chemical products. How value is co-created by oil company customers through representing ecosystem services in a multitude of ways within a network of actors, how chemistry and oil companies exchange the chemical products and services and the extent that the regulators are influencing chemical and oil companies needs to be clarified in this project.
Thirdly, business behaviours become more complex in chemical markets. Chemistry companies and their oil company customers have to cope with the regulations from precautionary principle or the alternative principle of risk assessment. The organizations like ORSPAR or REACH have their strategies take forward through adopting decisions binding on agreements and recommendations. Do chemical companies have impacts or influences on the regulators? We intend to address what role the company plays in the regulation process and how companies shape the regulation.
We will assess how industrial business actors develop their activities of developing, marketing and selling, using chemical and chemistry services coping with the ecosystem‟ s services. The business actors work in commercial, regulatory, scientific and technological activities within networks interact each other and regulators under the precautionary principle or polluter pays principle in order to shape a green chemistry market.
The research is taken in Business-to-Business setting. Chemical companies and their oil company customers are no longer just active sellers and passive buyers. Oil companies have to seek out their suppliers, assess suppliers, have suppliers solve problems and meet their
requirements. Chemical companies interact with the oil company customers‟ problem and requirements. Such activity is one of interaction rather than just one of action and reaction within a buyer-seller business relationship. Chemical products are produced and provided through interactions and the values of chemical services are co-created (Vargo and Lusch, 2004) through the process of interacting by the oil company customers. Both the producers and users of the chemical products need follow the legislation and a system of labelling and licensing products given some criteria of limited harm to the marine ecosystem. That will help the producer and their products user become developers of green chemistry. Industrial business actors‟ behaviours, co-created value of products and services, business interactions and relationships are all take into account in this project in order to address how business actors in chemical industrial collaborate and how they cope with regulations.
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Conference: Glasgow, Scotland (2011)