Therefore, CAT did not have to promote its products very heavily. In addition, it could charge its customers a premium. Regarding potential BHL customers, though, CAT had a unique situation with which to deal. Since BHL customers are often small contracting firms that have never purchased heavy equipment, they were not as likely to be familiar with the CAT name and its reputation. Therefore, CAT was going to have to heavily promote their new BHL s to these potential customers.
External forces come to bear on all of the above business operations.
The main force that BCP seems concerned with is its competition. BCP sells a more complete line of construction machines, so it competes with a lot of companies on individual product lines. Komatsu, Case, John Deere, and Mustang Manufacturing Company all compete with part of Caterpillar s BCP line. Case is probably the biggest threat to the Clayton facility because Case has a higher market share in BHL than does Caterpillar. When developing the BHL, CAT s development team was very attuned to the competition that existed in the industry.