Niche Strengths of the Ruddick Int'l Group

Most technology-driven market environments reflect an incredible level of technological leapfrogging and change. This in turn impacts opportunity and demand. Successful companies have learned to anticipate change through a blend of strategic thinking and staying in touch with the pulse of the marketplace. Our background in emerging market arenas is formidable and reflects an understanding of the dynamics at work within shifting, changing, developing markets. This understanding combines with our abilities in providing feedback from the marketplace, which results in a senior management perspective enabling us to identify the direction of the market; and with that, the anticipatory responses needed to capitalize on change and opportunity.

During the last two decades, the assumptions driving key global service-supply businesses have changed. The oilfield service supply business for example is an industry that was once driven by a mind-set focused on market share. In the last decade and a half, functionally this industry has become a service economy. Between the customer and the supplier there is now a "service layer." The displacement of the market-share mind-set -- and a mind-set focused on the best widget at the best price - is at the core of the change. The shift is toward a strong customer-driven demand for service performance is central to realistically evaluating market opportunity in fast-paced, changing markets.

The Ruddick Int'l Group has been evaluating Service Performance since 1977. At the heart of this work is the Ruddick Service Performance Index™. The Ruddick SPI has been tested and refined over the years. It provides strong indicators that relate to both the risk-reward trends and scenarios; as well as in the dimensions that bear on the importance associated with preferences and opportunity for expansion and new product acceptance within industry.

Customer attitudes, behavior and needs - within the context of key customer segments represents one of the most realistic means to understand the customer and the associated patterns of anticipated customer behavior behavior available to the marketing professional. Our approach involves custom-designing service-benefit purchase criteria criteria which in turn serves as the basis for then identifying the key motivational drivers, attitudes and segments associated with specific product categories. These segments then provide a realistic framework from which customer needs, motivations and attitudes can then be applied to marketing efforts.

This in turn become the foundation for realistic relationship marketing strategies. Marketing relationship strategies zero in on the communication orientation that undergirds the ongoing stream of transactions between "buyer and seller." This concept is based on the analogy that the first sale usually serves to initiate a courtship relationship between buyer and seller. The marriage potentially follows. How well the marriage develops will depend on how well the relationship is managed by the seller. Our experience in this area enables us to provide the insights needed to understand the dynamics driving opportunity and potential client relationships.