4. Research Design and Methodology

This study uses a multi-target research approach and connects VCM with the marketing of innovation. Exploring the meaning of VCM in industrial value chains and understanding the way of practicing and implementing VCM forms the first goal of this thesis. The second goal is to investigate the different VCM approaches and to analyze their effectiveness to increase the success rate of innovations. The third goal is to compare the performance of VCM strategies and to study systematically the impact of the identified factors for the supplier’s marketing success. This effect analysis is essential to determine which factors are sensitive, i.e. produce significant differences in the performance. Considering the interaction effects, the analysis helps to test the robustness of VCM strategies and supports suppliers’ choice of marketing strategy. In this thesis, a two-phase approach is selected. It starts with case study research and continues with a computational methodology. This implicates that the results of the case study are used to design a subsequent agent-based model. The chemical industry, especially coatings and sealants, is the application field for this thesis. This is based on the fact that chemical materials have to undergo several stages of processing or assembling until they arrive to their final destination. Their demand is thus of derivative nature.