Abstract 3M utilizes a variety of marketing information sources. They produce thousands of products that are offered in several different market segments. “3M is not a conglomerate like GE or United Technologies, which own a variety of industrial businesses that operate, for the most part, on their own.” (Gunther, 2010). This diversification makes it difficult to stick to specific marketing information resources. “Instead, 3M — a supplier to all of those companies– is a set of businesses organized around a big, busy and intellectually productive R&D lab which researches new technologies and processes and then develops them into products” (Gunther, 2010). 3M must utilize many different strategies that are specific to each division. They do however, have one strategy that has proven to be useful in all market segments. 3M refers to the strategy differently in each segment and gathers the data in different methods, but essentially is using the same method to accumulate information.
In the recent past 3M has struggled with being an “open” research and development company. While they have been able to become a leader in innovation and technological advances, they have failed to make gains in service and business model innovations. This was from a lack of external research efforts. The research and development was done in reverse. The department would research a segment of an industry to find an area that could use improvement and then try to align their new product with consumer needs. “While this approach requires some interaction with customers and consumers, there was less discussion of the discovery of unarticulated needs using ethnography or voice of the customer” (Phillips, 2009). 3M began to become stagnant in their divisions due to their lack of consumer research and needed to work on their marketing information resources. “Given the capabilities