Browsing by discipline "Skogsekonomi och marknadsföring"

For 80 years, Pine Chemical Industries have used Crude Tall Oil (CTO) for a wide range of products. To fulfil the climate goal, the European Union (EU) has changed its policy by subsidizing renewable sources, which in turn has promoted CTO as a resource for biofuels. Also, Finland has followed the EU by setting the target for 2020. This research aims to analyze the role of CTO in Finnish bio-economy by focusing on the market dynamics and value network between biofuel and pine chemical industry after the new EU regulation. In addition, it forecast the optimal future end use market. The empirical study is based on qualitative data from five interviewees representing a forest company, two biochemical companies, a research institute and a consulting firm. This study showed that the double carbon benefit supported the increase in demand of CTO. The import also increased to produce biodiesel. In addition, biofuel companies have more purchasing power. Also, decrease in export and price fluctuation has been observed. Strategically, this has directed the biochemical companies to decrease their fixed costs. UPM, Forchem and Kraton are the key players using more than two times CTO where one fourth is used for biodiesel. If available enough, both sectors will have an impact on Finnish bio economy. The double counting has helped Finland to reach EU renewable energy quota for traffic fuel distribution. However, this study also showed that it is not beneficial to invest heavily based on subsidies. Both Biofuel and Biochemical Companies should consider CTO as a competitive product even without the subsidy. It is resource-efficient to use the functionality of the molecule and long value chain to produce diversified product. There should also be room for R&D and innovation. It is for example possible to produce biodiesel from other sources including waste and animal fat. If there is scarcity, then it would be wiser to produce biochemicals rather than biodiesel for maximum economic benefit. New holistic regulations are needed from Finnish authorities. The policy should consider equal access to the raw material, the higher value of the product, free market mechanism without any distortion, stable and balance operating environment for all its bio-based industries. Consumer awareness and motivation should be increased. Cross-industry collaboration, networking and integrating is also essential. Overall, co-operation rather than competition is needed from both biochemical and biodiesel sides.

Bioeconomy is a concept that aims to provide sustainable solutions for economic growth by utilizing renewable natural resources. In Finland, the forest-based bioeconomy forms the base for bioeconomy. The Finnish Bioeconomy Strategy by the Ministry of Employment and the Economy has set ambitious targets regarding employment, output and innovative products and services. However, to date these solutions still remain by large in the theoretical level and the overall sustainability of bioeconomy is questioned by stakeholders. Urbanization is a world-wide phenomenon and also in Finland the biggest cities are expected to grow whilst the country-side becomes less inhabited. Thus, the importance of urban citizens becomes increasingly important in the implementation of forest-based bioeconomy, as they are the future consumers of biobased products and practices. Thereby understanding urban citizens’ perceptions, level of knowledge and opinions regarding the emerging bioeconomy practices is of fundamental importance. This thesis aims to provide insights into the topic with the research questions “what are the worldviews through which urban citizens understand the forest-based bioeconomy?” Furthermore, this thesis aims to provide insights into the question, “how do these worldviews affect the urban citizens’ perceptions of the forest-based bioeconomy?” These worldviews are screened through the Integrative Worldview Framework (IWF) to explain and understand the underlying latent elements of perceptions and acceptance. Additionally, this thesis contributes to a European-wide research network aiming to understand the regional disparities of forest-based bioeconomy perceptions and policies. To answer these questions, a quantitative survey was conducted in Helsinki city center in December 2018 and January 2019. The survey included 34 claims regarding wooden multistory buildings, forest carbon storage and forest-based bioeconomy. With a randomized approach, 206 responses were gathered in total. The statistical methods include descriptive statistics, crosstabulations and exploratory factor analysis and were done using the SPSS 25 Programme. The results proved to be positive and encouraging for the Finnish forest-based bioeconomy. Four worldview factors were detected: Utilitarian, Biocentric, Anti-bioeconomy, and Anthropocentric. Nearly 59% of the respondents perceived to be familiar with the meaning of forest-based bioeconomy and even more with both wooden multistory buildings (WMC) and forest carbon storage. Additionally, forest-based bioeconomy was associated with positive attributes such as generating new jobs and wellbeing.

Customer acquisition is important for businesses to guarantee their future profitability, as they strive for continuous growth. As customer acquisition takes up considerable resources, it is important to find solutions that are as cost-effective as possible, without compromising the quality. This study examines the cost-effectiveness and productivity of the sponsoring company, by exploring their customer acquisition. As the company carries this out in the form of phone calls, this study will examine the factors that affect these qualities. It will also consider how customer acquisition can be further developed in the future, concentrating on cost-effectiveness and productivity. This thesis has been carried out as a quantitative research. The methods used are traditional for understanding work efficiency and cost calculations, as well as simple key figures for comparison. The material used is the system data provided by the sponsoring company. The costs and work efficiency have been calculated on the basis of the company’s invoicing and monitoring the working hours of the callers. Based on the results, this thesis argues that the choice of call materials used as the basis for customer acquisition, is significant in terms of cost-effectiveness. There are obvious differences between different acquisition areas. However, the largest differences are evident when examining buyer teams within the company, where the differences between separate teams may be substantial. Even buyer areas that are close to one another may be very different from the perspective of customer acquisition. Furthermore, the caller also plays a big role in terms of cost-effectiveness. In the future, customer acquisition should be targeted to areas where it is as cost-effective as possible – effective call materials should be utilised in customer acquisition. Increasing internal cooperation and training the callers in the organization will also lead customer acquisition towards an even more cost-effective direction.

The aim of this thesis was to discover the similarities and differences between the Finnish and northwest Russian timber industry. The second goal was to find characteristics from the operational environment of the closely situated countries, in order to, increase cultural understanding when comparing the timber industry of these countries. Data collection was conducted via theme interviews by using two separate frameworks, which were Pestel and Core Competence. The Pestel framework focuses on the macro level of the operational environment, and the Core Competence framework on the micro level of the particular company. Research was also conducted on how the companies differentiate from each other, when the raw material is the same for the whole industry. How to produce added value and at the same time develop long-term and lasting customer relationships? The theme interviews were supplemented by using secondary sources and the Pestel framework. This approach was adopted to bring depth to the results, in order to increase the reliability of the data. According to the results, the main differences had to do with the culture, and what action is taken in specific situations. Furthermore, the conditions of the forest and timber industry in the two countries are completely different. For example, in Finland private forest owners own most of the forests, whereas, in Russia the government owns all the forests. This affects in multiple ways in how the forests are renewed, and the future quality of the timber. Differences regarding, for example, technology and corruption were discovered in the interviews and the secondary sources of data.

Growing concern on climate change has provided impetus for developing and implementing sustainable solutions in various industries. For instance, the theme of bioeconomy has increasingly gained interest in the 2000s. Other megatrends such as population growth and urbanization further highlight the importance of finding and implementing sustainable solutions to various industries, or as in this connection, the examination of the residential multi-story construction (MC) industry. More specifically, viewpoints regarding the industry’s productivity, environmental regulations and future trends regarding both MC and residential wooden multi-story construction (WMC) were emphasized. This study was conducted applying qualitative research methods. Semi-structured interviews were held in 2018 for 10 construction company executives, managers or people with an equivalent status mainly in areas related to procurement and production. The selected sampling strategy was purposeful sampling. The main criterion in the selection process was that the companies contacted did not have prior experience in WMC, as they were not seen being overly represented in previous literature especially in the context of WMC. Based on the results, the majority of experts perceived the productivity development in the construction industry similar as previous studies have shown. That is, productivity development has been slow compared to other industries. Some of the expressed solutions considered moving increasingly more toward prefabricated solutions and minimizing on-site construction, and the further development of technologies such as building information models (BIMs). However, the current zoning policies were seen to inhibit some of the potential, as they do not permit incorporating more repetitive production methods. The adoption rate of digital solutions were mentioned as an opportunity for productivity development, and the role of digitalization was seen to enhance productivity. Regarding the theme of environmental regulations, no additional or special metrics were brought up, as the current policies already demand extensive documentation. The emphasis in discussion was more inclined toward operational energy use instead of embodied energy. For example, investigating opportunities for implementing geothermal heat or solar panels were mentioned. Investors were seen to demand increasingly environmental certifications (e.g., BREEAM & LEED) in real-estate investments, however, consumer demand for this was not specifically identified. Regarding future trends in MC, prefabrication was mentioned the most often. In addition, digitalization and robotics were seen to have a larger role in future. The effects of urbanization to the Finnish housing market and to the consumers raised questions. As the results imply that the prefabrication rate will increase in the future, this in turn could possess a potential for WMC especially in off-site modular construction. However, it would seem that e.g. clear cost-advantages should be achieved to raise grater interest of construction companies. The results found similar implications of other studies where producing cost-advantages and developing standardization was emphasized. The market share of WMC in future was seen to either stay at the current levels or to increase. Notably, none of the experts saw that the market share of WMC would decrease toward 2030.

In recent years, timber and forest management service sales have increasingly moved into electronic services. Combining this with distant ownership can create a situation where forest owners' knowledge about silviculture and forest management is in danger of diminishing. Poor understanding of the condition of one’s own forest and silviculture increases the need of trust towards the service provider. The purpose of this study is to find out how forest owners currently make timber sales and purchase forest management services. In addition, the focus will be on identifying the factors involved in the sales and purchase decision and how virtual reality fits into timber trade, the purchase of forest management services, and the services of forest owners. In this research, e-services and virtual reality on the customer path rose to special consideration. More specific research setting or research questions were not assigned for this research due to the nature of design ethnography and grounded theory, which are used in this research. Design ethnography and grounded theory methods were chosen as the research approach. The purpose of ethnography is to gain a wholesome understanding of the customers’ behavior, beliefs, and reasons behind their actions. The research was conducted by interviewing forest owners and following their journey during the timber sales and purchase of the forest management services. Methods of grounded theory was used to provide the academic framework for this research. Results show that one of the most important, if not the most important factor in decision-making and choosing a service partner, is trust, which also has an intergenerational influence. Research results showed antecedent trust factors to be customer-based (e.g., previous experience) or company-based (e.g., company values and quality of the services). Other important factors affecting trust and decision making are perceived risk and customer learning, which are interrelation with customer trust. The results of this research indicate that virtual reality can potentially increase customer trust toward the service provider under certain conditions. Virtual reality was also seen as having an impact on customer learning, which allows forest owners to learn the effects of different silviculture practices on their own forest. The results show that every customer segment can benefit from virtual reality. Inspecting the forest plan and seeing the effects of different forestry operations in the virtual reality were seen as the most significant benefits of the virtual reality. In addition, interviewees saw that including the ability to see the visualization of the expected future growth in virtual reality would facilitate decision making.

For the last 20 years, the state administration of Finland has supported the development of wooden multistory construction (WMC) into the residential housing market. While the number of WMC dwellings has increased, WMC is still not a normalized construction practice. Civil servants—who are responsible for complying with national strategies while being tasked to satisfy the needs of Finnish citizens—are legally entrusted to oversee and approve the planning of all zoning maps. This authority includes the power to compel builders to comply with material preferences through zoning regulations. Regardless of this gatekeeping authority, they rarely enact such regulations. This qualitative study examines the attitudes and perceptions of civil servants regarding WMC. It also examines the civil servants’ interpretation of other stakeholder opinions towards WMC. The aim was to set a precedent for current-day beliefs about WMC from the perspective of this authoritative group, given no such in-depth opinions currently exist in the literature. Semi-structured interviews were held between May 2017-January 2018. 11 civil -servants holding high-level administrative roles in city planning and development from six different municipalities were interviewed. Based on qualitative content analysis of the data, interviewed civil servants held a variety of attitudes towards WMC. Support for the implementation of WMC was due to benefits incurred by the positive qualities of the engineered wood products, which permit flexible construction technologies that directly enhance citizen lifestyles, while supporting local and national economies. Hindrances in the implementation of WMC were a result of an operating environment with poor information distribution, few WMC industry actors and limited government policy measures to support project implementation. These factors trigger high risk and high cost. Material limitations were rarely discussed, but may result in high cost or project risk. The stakeholders whose opinions were most frequently discussed included the municipalities the civil servants represented, municipality residents, and private developers. The opinions of other stakeholders (e.g. end users) were rarely mentioned. Developers are reluctant to take on WMC projects due to bottom-line mentality and perceived development risk. Residents’ opinions are equally colored with interest and skepticism. Municipality opinions were mostly in line with the perceptions shared by civil servants. All stakeholders were perceived to have greater interest in WMC if risk or prejudice were dispelled through positive, real-world experiences or exposure to WMC.