Samenvatting

What are successful companies? That question will be investigated. The determination of successful factors will be identified by explaining the successful factors of a company by the following questions: How come successful ventures are successful and non successful ventures are not? What are the most important motivations of consumers? What is important according to the consumers? Which stage in the production process provides the highest added value1 and which stage provides the highest costs? What are the accession thresholds2 in the company branch and between segments in the market? Every company has a business model. It is the carcass of the company. By means of the business model an organization gets the idea of how making money. It can be described best by means of business model canvas. Alex Osterwalder has developed 9 building blocks that constitute the "business model canvas". The model is proposed of 9 elements which are: customer segments, value propositions, channels, customer relationships, revenue streams, key resources, key activities, key partners and cost structure. The use of business model is explained by the process of designing a business model. This consists of 5 phases: mobilizing, understanding & sharing, designing, implementation and managing. In this paper the business model canvas is applied to the graphic and reflective divisions of 3M and Avery Dennison. A business model comparison is made of two market leading worldwide operating companies which are active in the same industry. 3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing) is an international technology company and has more than 50,000 products. More than 100 years the company perfects and introduces new products, does inventions and develops products for several different sectors. Worldwide 3M has more than 76,000 employees and invests more than one billion dollar in Research & Development on annual base. 3M is active in more than 60 countries worldwide. Displays & Graphics is one of the 3M divisions. This division occupies with all kinds of films for publicity and signposting. The products the Displays and Graphics division provide are films for display improvement, reflecting materials, eye catching graphic applications, projection systems etc. Avery Dennison is an international technology company and global manufacturer and distributor3 of pressure sensitive adhesive materials4 (such as self-
1 Added value means the enhancement added to a product or service by a company before the product is offered to customers. (Investor words, 2011)
2 A threshold is the level at which something starts to happen or have an effect. (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English,2003) .
3 A distributor is an entity that buys noncompeting products or product lines, warehouses them, and resells them to retailers or direct to the end users or customers. Most distributors provide strong manpower and cash support to the supplier or manufacturer's promotional efforts.