QUESTION 1 (35 Marks)

CLO CLO1

Marks (a) (b) (c) (d)

3 6 6 20

(a) Provide three (3) differences between Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-
Customer (B2C) products (3 Marks)

(b) There are four (4) different attributes to describe a B2C product. List and elaborate the
significance of each attribute. (6 Marks)
(c) Based on your answer in (b), suggest the specification of a liquid detergent for each
attribute. (6 Marks)

(d) Read the article below.

“To provide cooling for foods, in refrigerators and freezers, refrigeration cycles are
required which include a refrigerant (working fluid in a refrigeration cycle). It is important to
locate stable, volatile compounds that boil at typical refrigeration temperatures. The choice
of new materials - small molecules for refrigerants, is the technological challenge in
satisfying the customers’ perceived needs for low-cost, nontoxic, non-flammable refrigerants.
Initially, as viewed by Thomas Midgely Jr. (a researcher at General Motors) in 1937,
thousands of compounds involving all of the elements in the periodic table were potential
refrigerants. To make intelligent selections, Midgely reasoned those only compounds
involving C, N, O, S, and H atoms could be sufficiently volatile, but not too volatile (like inert
gases), to serve as working fluids (i.e., ones that vaporize and condense at boiling points in
the range of -40 to 0 C at low pressure). The addition of the halogen atoms, F and Cl, made
possible a number of compounds having the proper volatility while increasing their latent
heat of vaporization, and providing sufficiently low viscosities and melting-point
temperatures.
The selection of these seven atoms sharply reduced the search space of the molecular
structure design problem. Through the work by DuPont, when the H atom was added,
products like Freon 21, CHCl2F, became very popular.
In summary, these new materials, involving just seven atoms, provided the technical
differentiations, that is, intermediate volatilities and easy detection of leaks. In turn, these
technical differentiations led to the Freon products that satisfied the customer-value
propositions; that is, providing low-cost refrigeration and air conditioning with nontoxic and
non-flammable refrigerants.
These products, while successful in satisfying these original customer needs,
unfortunately created a significant environmental problem. By the mid-1980s, measurements
confirmed that parts-per-billion concentrations of these compounds had accumulated in the
stratosphere and had reacted with O3 to create ozone holes at the South and North Poles.
Consequently, protocols were adopted in Montreal that banned the use of chlorine
containing Freon compounds.
This re-opened the refrigerant design problem, with the search space for new materials
further restricted; that is, with the Cl atom eliminated. Subsequently, the search space was
extended to include the O and S atoms, leading to two potential new refrigerants, CH3CHF2
and SF2.” This has provided the desired technical differentiation of not reacting with O3 in the
stratosphere, while satisfying the customer needs, which now included low smog potential.

Based on the article, develop a complete innovation map for refrigerant using suitable layers.
Include both refrigerants before and after the Montreal Protocol to highlight how the
refrigerant development are evolving according to surrounding issues that surfaces. (20
Marks)