The Dow Chemical Company

Polystyrene is one of the most important raw material as plastics resin. It is widely used in consumer electronic, appliances, functional buildings and packing industries. The Dow Chemical Company is the largest manufacturer of polystyrene in the world. During the early stage when Dow entered into China market, due to the outstanding quality and the efficient distribution channel, Dow successfully achieved over 70% market share of polystyrene in the appliances and consumer electronic market in china. With the other foreign polystyrene manufacturers entering into China from 1996, the supply of polystyrene in China turned to satisfy the demand. As the quality of competitors' product improving and the strict controlling to the importing and domestic tariff policy from China government, Dow lost its advantage in product quality and distribution channel. Since those old distributors could not meet the change of business environment, they lost the interesting to be the distributors of Dow polystyrene. The distribution network of Dow polystyrene in China seemed to collapse. To settle down the crisis, we have conducted detail analysis on Dow' market, product, marketing strategy and its competitors. It comes out the suggestion to Dow polystyrene for its channel strategy in China. In order to deal with the channel conflict between the old and new distribution channels, there are suggestion for appropriate measurement and solution as well.