Marketing innovative products in a conservative industry : A look at Cross-Laminated Timber

Sammanfattning: Background:      Previous experience with the construction industry tells us that it’s often conservative and slow to adopt changes or use radical new ideas. This is a problem faced by Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT), as it’s provides a new way of working with wooden construction, that is still unfamiliar to most companies. Marketing this new solution is therefore hard, especially since a lot of the public is still unsure about the qualities and properties of the product. Purpose:               The purpose of this thesis is to identify the different selling points of CLT to see how this product can be marketed towards an audience that is still sceptical towards the wooden material. Method:                Results are gathered with the help of an interview study with six different companies that all in some way worked with CLT. The results are then put through a grounded analysis. Conclusion:                   The results show us that the most important thing to do when marketing a product that few people know of, or are sceptical towards, is to make sure that information about the benefits of using the product gets out. The most important marketing point for CLT seems to be the environmental advantage compared to concrete and the speed of which buildings can be erected.