While this is not to say that they are simple to understand, especially given the emotional dimension of consumer decisions, consumer markets tend to have a relatively simple structure: consumers, influencers, competitors, distributors and regulation are the usual components.
In B2B/B2G high-tech, on the other hand, each market associated with a major sector of activity (such as aeronautics, automotive equipment, energy, space, construction or defence) constitutes a particular “market ecosystem” with many interacting and constantly evolving players.
Frequent players in technology markets
Let us list some of these frequently encountered actors:
- Public or private, civil or military customers who can validate technology, product or solution, service or transaction model choices
- cCustomer customers who can influence the behaviour of the direct customer
- End-users of the products at the customer’s premises (e.g. pilot users of the systems)
- Internal influencers and influencers at the customer’s end
- Organisations associated with a particular sector in export countries: government, administrations, local industry
- Competitors who can influence technical solutions, offers, prices, launch or kill innovations, disrupt the market
- National or European bodies responsible for leading and coordinating major projects (e.g. ESA)
- Public bodies likely to assess or support projects, companies or sectors at local, regional or national level (e.g. regions, national or global competitiveness clusters)
- Public or private, national or European funders responsible for financing innovation or projects
- Regulatory bodies responsible for defining the rules applicable to other players
- Certification bodies responsible for certifying products or procedures
- Civil or military design offices responsible for conducting project studies and specifying them in varying degrees of detail
- Economic experts in the sector
- Technological experts in the sector
All or some of these actors are frequently found in each “market ecosystem”.
As a result, knowing a B2B/high-tech market means identifying the influential players, understanding their role and objectives, and understanding how they influence or shape the market in the future.
Such knowledge is often a matter of years of practice in a given profession and environment, of personal knowledge, of involvement in a given environment. This explains why specialists in a high-tech B2B/B2G market, whether they are technical, economic or other specialists, generally have many years of practice and skills acquired over time. They are therefore not easily interchangeable and usually evolve for several years in the same technological and economic environment, even if they sometimes have to change companies or organisations.
