More than half the companies polled by Coopers & Lybrand have entered alliances in the past five years -- often to leverage their marketing dollars. Service companies do more deals (current average: three) and experience more bad matches than manufacturers do.
Kinds of strategic alliance and percentage of respondents involved in alliances in the past five years
Product companies Service companies
Joint marketing/promotion 30% 44%
Joint selling/distribution 26 33
Technology license 17 24
Design collaboration 20 18
R&D contracts 14 17
Outsourcing functions 10 16
Production arrangements 20 9
Source: "Trendsetter Barometer," a survey of 170 service and 230 product companies with average sales of $13.5 million, by Coopers & Lybrand, New York City, June 1993.