Caterpillar’s Business Strategy Case Study

Caterpillar Inc. (Caterpillar), incorporated on March 12, 1986, is a manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines, and diesel-electric locomotives. The company operates through its three product Segments: Resource Industries, Construction Industries, and Energy & Transportation. The company also provides financing and related services through its Financial products Segment. The company offers its products under the brand names Caterpillar, CAT, design versions of CAT and Caterpillar, Electro-Motive, FG Wilson, MAK, MWM, Perkins, Progress Rail, SEM and Solar Turbines.

Social impact:

Life changing:

Emotional: badge value, provides access, attractiveness, design/aesthetics

Functional: simplifies, saves time, reduces effort, quality, reduces risks, avoids hassles, variety

Affiliation:

Commissions are used in the affiliate revenue model example. Essentially, you resell goods from other merchants or businesses on your website or in your physical store. You are then compensated for referring new consumers to the company offering the goods or services. Affiliates often use a pay-per-sale or pay-per-display model. As a result, the business can access a more diversified prospective client base without extra active sales or marketing efforts. Affiliate marketing is a popular internet business strategy with significant potential for growth. When a client purchases via a referral link, the affiliate gets a portion of the transaction's cost.

Augmenting products to generate data:

Due to advancements in sensors, wireless communications, and big data, it is now possible to collect and analyze massive quantities of data in a wide range of settings, from wind turbines to kitchen appliances to intelligent scalpels. These data may be utilized to improve asset design, operation, maintenance, and repair or improve how an activity is carried out. Such skills, in turn, may serve as the foundation for new services or business models.

Best in class services:

When a firm brings a product to market, it must first create a compelling product and then field a workforce capable of manufacturing it at a competitive price. Neither task is simple to perform effectively; much managerial effort and scholarly study have been dedicated to these issues. Nevertheless, providing a service involves another aspect: managing clients, who are consumers of the service and may also contribute to its creation.

Brands consortium:

A collection of brands that coexist under the auspices of a parent business. The businesses in this pattern develop, produce, and market equipment. Their strength is in copywriting. Occasionally used to refer to a short-term agreement in which many companies (from the same or other industrial sectors or countries) combine their financial and personnel resources to execute a significant project benefiting all group members.

Bundling:

Multiple products or services have been bundled together to enhance the value. Bundling is a marketing technique in which goods or services are bundled to be sold as a single entity. Bundling enables the purchasing of several goods and services from a single vendor. While the goods and services are often linked, they may also consist of different items that appeal to a particular market segment.

Customer loyalty:

Customer loyalty is a very successful business strategy. It entails giving consumers value that extends beyond the product or service itself. It is often provided through incentive-based programs such as member discounts, coupons, birthday discounts, and points. Today, most businesses have some kind of incentive-based programs, such as American Airlines, which rewards customers with points for each trip they take with them.

Direct selling:

Direct selling refers to a situation in which a company's goods are immediately accessible from the manufacturer or service provider rather than via intermediate channels. The business avoids the retail margin and any extra expenses connected with the intermediaries in this manner. These savings may be passed on to the client, establishing a consistent sales experience. Furthermore, such intimate touch may help to strengthen client connections. Finally, direct selling benefits consumers by providing convenience and service, such as personal demonstrations and explanations of goods, home delivery, and substantial satisfaction guarantees.

eCommerce:

Electronic commerce, or e-commerce (alternatively spelled eCommerce), is a business model, or a subset of a larger business model, that allows a company or person to do business via an electronic network, usually the internet. As a result, customers gain from increased accessibility and convenience, while the business benefits from integrating sales and distribution with other internal operations. Electronic commerce is prevalent throughout all four main market segments: business to business, business to consumer, consumer to consumer, and consumer to business. Ecommerce may be used to sell almost any goods or service, from books and music to financial services and airline tickets.

From push to pull:

In business, a push-pull system refers to the flow of a product or information between two parties. Customers pull the products or information they need on markets, while offerers or suppliers push them toward them. In logistics and supply chains, stages often operate in both push and pull modes. For example, push production is forecasted demand, while pull production is actual or consumer demand. The push-pull border or decoupling point is the contact between these phases. Wal-Mart is a case of a company that employs a push vs. a pull approach.

Ingredient branding:

Ingredient branding is a kind of marketing in which a component or ingredient of a product or service is elevated to prominence and given its own identity. It is the process of developing a brand for an element or component of a product in order to communicate the ingredient's superior quality or performance. For example, everybody is aware of the now-famous Intel Inside and its subsequent success.

Integrator:

A systems integrator is an individual or business specializing in integrating component subsystems into a unified whole and ensuring that those subsystems work correctly together. A process is known as system integration. Gains in efficiency, economies of scope, and less reliance on suppliers result in cost reductions and may improve the stability of value generation.

Lease:

The item that's being sold is now available for rent on an hourly/daily/monthly/yearly basis. A lease is a contract that specifies the terms under which one can rent a property. It ensures the lessee, the tenant, access to an asset, and the lessor, the property owner or landlord, receives monthly payments from the lessee for a predetermined period of months or years. Both the lessee and the lessor risk penalties for breaching the contract's conditions.

Licensing:

A formal agreement in which the owner of the copyright, know-how, patent, service mark, trademark, or other intellectual property grants a licensee the right to use, manufacture, and sell copies of the original. These agreements often restrict the licensee's scope or area of operation, define whether the license is exclusive or non-exclusive, and stipulate whether the licensee will pay royalties or another kind of compensation in return. While licensing agreements are often used to commercialize the technology, franchisees also utilize them to encourage the sale of products and services.

Make and distribute:

In this arrangement, the producer creates the product and distributes it to distributors, who oversee the goods' ongoing management in the market.

Selling of branded merchandise:

Merchandising, in the broadest definition, is any activity that helps sell goods to a retail customer. At the retail in-store level, merchandising refers to the range of goods offered for sale and the presentation of those products in a manner that piques consumers' attention and encourages them to make a purchase. Like the Mozilla Foundation and Wikimedia Foundation, specific open-source organizations offer branded goods such as t-shirts and coffee mugs. This may also be seen as an added service to the user community.

Supply chain:

A supply chain is a network of companies, people, activities, data, and resources that facilitate the movement of goods and services from supplier to consumer. The supply chain processes natural resources, raw materials, and components into a completed product supplied to the ultimate consumer. In addition, used goods may re-enter the distribution network at any point where residual value is recyclable in advanced supply chain systems. Thus, value chains are connected through supply chains.

Technology trends:

New technologies that are now being created or produced in the next five to ten years will significantly change the economic and social landscape. These include but are not limited to information technology, wireless data transmission, human-machine connection, on-demand printing, biotechnology, and sophisticated robotics.

Rent instead of buy:

Services that do not need the product to be purchased but rather rent it for the economic benefit of requiring less money to access the commodity. When you rent, you assume less obligation since most of the burden is placed on the owner's shoulders. There is no debt; you are just responsible for the monthly rent. When renting, you have more flexibility by signing a six-month or one-year lease. This implies that you will be confined to that location for at least that period. When your lease term expires, you have the option of switching to another product or renewing your lease.