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CHAPTER 5: EATON
SUMMARY
Eaton Corporation is a large business-to-business industrial manufacturer. The company
manufactures everything from car valves to circuit breakers. Words such as trusted, reliable,
quality, and high value are used to describe Eaton, a brand that enhances other products. It has
four main product groups with 10,000+ products total. Eaton’s challenge is to communicate
consistently, yet segmented, across its departments and product categories.
B2B is a very sophisticated marketing environment with educated customers often playing a big
role in product development. Additionally, there is often more than one decision maker in the
customer’s organization. Eaton’s marketing department has to understand who all the influencers
are on a purchasing decision and reach each one. Trust, confidence, and problem solving are
more important than price to most of Eaton’s customers. They want to know Eaton can help them
if something critical goes wrong. Overall, Eaton is successful at beating out its competition
because it focuses on understanding its customers’ business needs, meeting that need, and
providing additional value in its solutions through product innovation.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. What are the major differences in Eaton’s marketing program in contrast to consumer
marketing?
2. The chapter stresses the buyer-seller interdependence in organizational buying behavior. How
is this reflected in Eaton’s strategies?
3. What are the main attributes of the Eaton brand?
4. Why is changing the marketing environment so crucial to Eaton’s marketing plan?
1. Go to the Eaton Web site and describe their value proposition. What would you consider as
their mission statement?
2. The video makes reference to some of the people involved in a client’s buying center. Using
the resources at your disposal, try to sketch out as best you can the buying center of a typical
Eaton client.
