Date: 04.06.2009 Program: Bachelor in International Marketing Fudan University & Norwegian School of Management
“This paper is written as a part of the undergraduate program at BI Norwegian School of Management. This does not entail that BI Norwegian School of Management has cleared the methods applied, the results presented, nor the conclusions drawn”
Jotun China – All the Colours in the World
Executive summary
Jotun Kemisk Fabrik A/S was founded in March 1926, operating only in Norway until 1962 when it began to expand internationally. Today Jotun operates in more than 70 countries, and is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of paints and coatings. Jotun has been in the Chinese market since 1983, initially focusing only on marine coatings and protective coatings where the brand became very successful. Encouraged by this, Jotun China decided to enter the Chinese decorative paint market in 2001 with the long term goal of becoming the market’s leading brand. However, after 8 years in the Chinese decorative paint market, Jotun China has not been able to replicate its previous successes. Therefore, we the authors of this thesis, working in collaboration with Jotun China staff, set out first to determine the viability of Jotun’s latest strategy for the Chinese decorative paint market, and second to suggest concrete steps to follow if and when executing this strategy. Our findings are based on extensive market research, as well as collection and analysis of both primary and secondary data. Our thesis is presented in six parts. In Part One, we provide an introduction to our thesis and background information of Jotun, define our problem statement, research aim, and research questions, and describe the types of difficulties we encountered. In Part Two, we give an
