K corporation, the LNG wholesaler, has experienced a stable business environment because it has been a public corporation and monopolist. But it faces several marketing problems such as the declination of the demand increasing rate and the unstable demand structure. And also, it will experience the privatization of its marketing sector from 2002. So, it needs new marketing strategies for those challenges.
In this article, I proposed the symbiotic marketing strategy as K's new marketing strategy and establish the system of K's symbiotic marketing strategy. For the system, I proposed 4 steps; identification of problems, evaluation and decision of alternatives, evaluation and decision of partners, structure and administration of the organization.
For the first time, after I analyzed the external business environments through several models and scrutinized American case, I could find K's proper strategic directions; demand expansion, demand creation, establishment of entry barriers, response to Government's policy.
For these directions, it could be found that K must choose the symbiotic marketing strategy rather than the internal growth or the M&A as its growth strategy. Especially, it needs the symbiotic marketing with city gas companies. As the analytic results of 3C model and risk evaluation model, the proper partners are not all city gas companies but several ones; the city gas companies which do not belong to conglomerates.
And K can not select the proper organization for the symbiotic marketing because it has had a lot of conflicts with the city gas companies. So I proposed several preparation steps before the formation of a proper organization. There are several other partners for K's symbiotic marketing strategy; the manufacturers of NGVs and LNG-related instruments.
Finally, I could find the suggestion that K corporation can pursue a differentiation strategy as a generic competitive strategy through the symbiotic marketing.
