Apart from campaigns, launches, and planned consumer-facing activity, the SC Marketer should be able to share research information on the consumer with the retailer/vendor and back e chain. The more that all key players understand the customer, th tter the perspective of needs and focus. After all, everyone has the sans je ve in mind; customer profit- ability through customer satisfacti Managing and running the chhogy that can cluster customer informa- tion and provide knowled u upply chain is often farmed out by most companies to Applicatio is Providers (ASPs) and there are literally thou- sands of such organis i s n paging data and data warehouses. Fundamental to this activity is the belt that observing buyer behaviour can lead to the successful prediction of future buyer behaviour.
As stated above, the SC marketer also needs to build a relationship with opera- tions management and manage costs. Traditionally in a manufacturing SC, 50% of the costs are inventory. The focus for the marketer and operations is cost reduction, to maximise profit at a price the customer is willing to pay. Both are therefore looking to develop channel partners both on- and offline, find strategic alliances and comfortable up- and downstream alliances. However, healthy conflict exists between the SC marketer and the operations management.