3. Marketing Supplier Innovations

VCM describes the practice of influencing the entire value chain to succeed in marketing supplier materials, especially innovative ones. These materials have to be canalized through many stages in the value chain and need to be accepted and forwarded by many firms in the downstream direction. To promote this kind of innovation across the value chain, suppliers have to explain their benefit and functionality explicitly. This implies that they must offer facts about products, processes, and markets for the different players in the value chain. The type of information required depends among others on the newness of innovation. The implementation of supplier innovations is often delayed or hindered by suppliers’ immediate customers. They show a dismissive attitude toward supplier innovations because they do not want to place their business relationships with downstream customers at risk. To break through immediate customers’ innovation resistance, suppliers use VCM even if they have to meet the challenging task of reducing the perceived knowledge distance to applicators. They try to gain some applied or technical as well as product-related or user knowledge. In this way, the differences between the value-chain actors are diminished and the risk of misunderstanding is decreased.