Managing natural gas business: a case of Bharat Natural Gas Company Limited

Marketing - value proposition and value delivery, switching cost, customer acquisition and retention, positioning, pricing, distribution and retailing, role of trust and transparency to build sustainable relationship in B2B context, and efficient service delivery.

Undergraduate and graduate students in marketing, business administration, strategy, retailing, B2B marketing, services marketing and general management courses. Also, it can be used for executive management/training programmes.

The case focuses on an existing scenario of a natural gas business in Gujarat, India, in order to provide understanding of marketing challenges, especially in the B2B context, faced by organisations in this evolving business environment. The case examines the strategies and policies implemented by the company and their impact on the customer. The case presents reactions and responses from the concerned customers. The case illustrates the criticalness of understanding customer expectations and designing and delivering customer centric strategies to sustain market leadership in an evolving and competitive market.

The case study enables the students to understand and analyse: the current business environment; the important factors impacting natural gas business; economic analysis of energy; opportunity and challenges for doing cleaner and greener business; role of cleaner fuel to reduce carbon footprint; and carbon credit impacting top line and bottom line of a customer. The case provides students the opportunity to understand and analyse the importance of switching costs to acquire a new customer; and devising and implementing marketing strategies to expand customer base and enter into new territories.

Teaching notes.