Case Study: Steel Plates and Sections
Product/service area: Steel Plates and Sections
Sales turnover: >£2 billion/year
The management of one of the specialist divisions of a major steel producer needed to quantify the potential demand for several grades of high-performance steel that they were planning to introduce. Ditton was commissioned to carry out a detailed study of current and probable future market requirements for these steels in a number of key European market sectors, using a combination of desk research and field interviews.
The study showed that there was significant potential for several of the grades but also that there were important requirements in terms of technical backup, quality control and speed of delivery that would need to be met if the client was to make a successful entry into the market.
This study was one of the many carried out by Ditton where additional information beyond that specified in the original research brief emerged from the face-to-face interviews. This enabled more informed conclusions to be drawn, which greatly assisted the client during the subsequent product planning phase.