In a more digitalized world the paper industry has struggled to deliver customer value and stay relevant when the digital media has started to emerge. This problem has especially happened to newspaper which has seen a decline in Sweden with over 20% the last decade. Paper mills has also started to destroy shareholder value as many mills only work with offering customers low prices and tries to outlive their competitors. This has led to the following research objective of this study: To examine the importance of end customer value in paper industry for developing market shares in the digital era. This study has been an exploratory and descriptive study with a qualitative data collection. The data has been to one part been collected through a market survey that has asked end-users how they perceive price and quality when comparing two different types of paper. Also interviews with one paper producer and two printing companies have been done to cover the professional aspect of customer value for the paper industry. It has been clearly shown in this study that customers and companies inside the paper industry are agreeing in which customer values being most important, quality and price. The importance of being innovative was also stated by interviewed printing companies and the paper producer. The market survey was a good example of how innovation, from a paper producer, related to important customer values – perceived quality and perceived price – can create a potentially higher market share and profitability, instead of just lowering their prices and try to outlive their competitors. The study has also contributed to see that companies inside the paper industry are conscious that they face tough competition from a more digitalized world. Even though the companies know that they face competition from the digital media the companies have a good understanding of which products they can continue to compete with and which products that digital media has the upper hand on.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:ltu-72757 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Herlitz, Erik |
| Publisher | Luleå tekniska universitet, Institutionen för ekonomi, teknik och samhälle |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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