The Strategic Evolution of the Indonesian Tea Industry: A B2B Case Study

For the B to B Marketing course in my Master’s in Management, E-Business & Digital Marketing specialization at CNAM Paris, the assignment was to write a case study, the kind meant to be read and discussed rather than just graded, that illustrates a specific set of B2B principles in action. I chose to build mine around an industry I have an actual stake in as an Indonesian: tea.

What the Case Study Does

It traces a fictionalized but structurally grounded arc from 1990 to 2026: an upstream sector of state-owned plantations and private estates selling raw leaves into a linear, top-down supply chain, hit hard in the late 1990s by a shift in consumer habits and the rise of substitute beverages. That’s derived demand working against you: if the downstream brands can’t sell tea to consumers, the upstream producers can’t sell leaves to the brands, and there’s nothing the producers can do about it alone.

The case follows the industry’s response: competitors setting aside rivalry to fund a shared “drink more tea” campaign that grows the whole category rather than any single brand, using that campaign as leverage to keep tea on supermarket shelves, a subsequent “import invasion” that exposes the limits of growing demand for a generic category when origin doesn’t matter to the buyer, and a final pivot toward certified, ingredient-branded origin marketing as a way to compete on something other than price.

A Note on the Case

This is a teaching case, not a verified history. It’s built around real institutions and real market dynamics, state plantation holding companies, real retail chains, the real pressure that cheap imports put on Indonesian smallholders, but some names, dates, and campaign details are composite or invented to keep the narrative focused on the B2B concepts it’s meant to illustrate: derived demand, horizontal alliances (coopetition) as a survival strategy in a shrinking category, the difference between primary and selective demand stimulation, and ingredient branding as a route out of commoditization. Readers after the verified, literal history of Indonesian tea policy should go to the Indonesia Tea Board’s own records instead.