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If you were a top executive at LKF, how would you redirect your reverse marketing approach? As an executive facing a budget crunch after the Asian Economic Crisis, I believe that I would develop a system to rate the projects that are critical to the success of LKF. With fewer dollars to spend, each supplier development activity needs to be worth the cost. Another way to implement this more constrained approach is to focus more on supplier development activities than on true reverse marketing activities as exemplified by the case of East-Ex. By offering more technical assistance rather than financial assistance, LKF can maximize its budget to develop suppliers. Supplier development through reverse marketing can be quite expensive but can produce dramatic results. For example, LKF’s assistance to Three-San reaped a costs savings of “3.1 million on materials and reduced lead time by half a month”. Clearly, the supplier development is crucial to the success of the firm and should not be reduced in a declining economic environment. But to accomplish more with less requires a greater focus on the priorities of the corporation.
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