Co-development as a marketing strategy in the construction industry

Abstract

This paper deals with a specific issue in project marketing, namely project co-development, presented as a relational and cooperative form of exchange in the project network. It endeavours to find out under what conditions project co-development is considered as a viable marketing strategy as opposed to competitive bidding. A model is developed, which is then used to analyze two cases of project co-development in the construction industry. Of the two cases, one is a successful case and the other is a failure case. This enabled us to analyze factors and conditions that can lead to a successful co-development strategy. Factors such as, project complexity, conflicting objectives, lack of compatibility, lack of trust and commitment and lack of coherence between the budget and the objectives turned out to influence a co-development strategy. The role played by the key decision-makers (project manager) also influenced the success/failure of co-development strategy.