Market Guidance for Laboratory Suppliers

The pressures on the scientific community have never been as great as they are today, where constraints on resources and budgets means the modern researcher needs to balance quality and efficiency. One area where this is vital is the supply of laboratory products and services. For example, competitive pricing for your essential, everyday items yet without compromising quality and service, get the balance wrong and the consequences could be disastrous. Suppliers today must offer the right ingredients and service to ensure long term relationships.

A good example is Scientific Laboratories Supplies Ltd, better known as SLS Ltd and established in 1991. SLS has grown quickly to become one of the UK's scientific community's preferred suppliers, offering a wealth of brands and options. Geoff Douglas, recently appointed Head of Marketing comments, "The way we must approach our market is changing, total project cost has become far more important to many of our customers. Resources such as labour and time are being calculated and this changes peoples' priorities and suppliers must adapt to this change." He continues, "Without an understanding for what is important a laboratory supplier is unable to offer customers the right 'mix' of services and products and this is a major influence on our direction and policy."

SLS feels so strongly about this that they are investing in their own market research operation to ask customers for views and values on their marketplace to ensure they offer customers exactly what they want, rather than what they perceive to be required.

Geoff Douglas concludes, "We want to identify our customers priorities, how they differ from previous years and we are contacting people and asking them to complete our quick and simple survey. We have produced a dedicated web page to collect this data" Geoff continues, "We appreciate people are busy, so as an incentive we are offering a thank you gift to everyone who completes our feedback questionnaire, with one lucky contributor receiving a new Wii games console."