PP&A conducted 21 one-hour structured interviews with TiO2 buyers between March 11 and March 28, 2024, and completed a standard competitor-analysis questionnaire for each. Ten respondents held procurement and purchasing roles, from purchasing manager to vice president of global procurement. Seven worked in sales, marketing, business development, technical or key-account roles, three led their companies or their strategic projects, and one gave no title. Five spoke from former roles. By primary application, ten bought for coatings and paint, six for plastics, two for paper and packaging, and three for specialty pigments and chemicals. Three worked at companies that both use and distribute TiO2. Between them they covered TiO2 purchasing in about 20 countries, most often the United States, China, Germany, the United Kingdom and India.

The questionnaire had five parts. Company profiling captured role, application, annual demand and packaging. Purchasing preferences ranked nine supplier-selection criteria, recorded which of eight named producers and chemical distributors each buyer had used in the past two to five years, ranked preferred suppliers and captured ordering channels. The deliveries section recorded, supplier by supplier and separately for the high-demand and low-demand markets, lead times in days, flexibility to change quantities and the share of orders delivered on time, plus minimum order quantities, custom-grade batch rules and special inventory programs. The last two parts covered forecast sharing and what a supplier should do to win share through its supply chain.

The client received the 21 completed questionnaires, with about 100 supplier-level ratings for each delivery measure in each market condition and each buyer's commentary. Together they formed a customer-side benchmark of the major producers. The data showed how buyers rank the criteria for choosing a supplier, and how each producer's lead times, on-time delivery and order flexibility held up in the high-demand and the low-demand market. It recorded which producers impose minimum orders or offer inventory programs, and how buyers share forecasts. The commentary set out how buyers prefer to order and what they would want a producer to change in its supply chain. Delivery performance moved with the market cycle, and the questionnaires recorded how far it moved for each producer. The benchmark gave the client a fact base, in customers' terms, for the supply chain program it was supporting.