Abstract
Raquel Barbosa Ribeiro and Isabel Soares
The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Consumption and Consumer Studies
Published Online: 24 MAR 2015
DOI: 10.1002/9781118989463.wbeccs013
Business-to-business B2B Marketing
Business-to-business (B2B) marketing concerns marketing activities between organizations: companies, governments, institutions, or NGOs. B2B marketing particularities, when compared to the most common typology of marketing relations, known as business-to-consumers or B2C, mean fewer customers but more stakeholders, more complex decisions, larger quantities, and higher sums of money involved, product customization, and the prevalence of rational motivations, oriented either for profit or for the public interest.
B2B marketing was formerly known as industrial marketing, referring to the transactions of products, raw materials, and supplies for other businesses. Having gained serious scholarly interest from the 1960 onward, B2B marketing accounts for relatively few scientific contributions when compared to B2C marketing, as Grewal and Lilien (2012) note. Besides the generalist marketing journals, research on B2B marketing is found in specialized journals, including Industrial Marketing Management, the Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, and the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing.
In B2B, consumers are titled customers or clients. B2B markets are characterized by relatively few, yet powerful, customers whose acquisitions are considerable in terms of units, volume, and value. Frequently, a small number of customers represent a high share of the total demand. In contrast to individual consumers and households, these customers have distinct objectives: increasing profits, reducing costs, satisfying multiple stakeholders simultaneously (final consumers, employees, actionists), and complying with legal obligations and the public good. Rationality and efficiency prevail in decision making, which is chiefly oriented to best price choices. Impulsive buying is less frequent. The demand in B2B marketing is strongly affected by factors such as final consumers’ demand, public expenditure, and macroeconomic indicators. Organizational demand is, however, more inelastic than that of individuals given its more complex processes and contracts, which slow down reaction to changes.
The most important customers exert various forms of power over their providers, often determining prices, sales conditions, deadlines, and product customization details. Purchase procedures are usually formalized, routinized, multistage, and requiring advanced technical expertise from the parties involved. Actors implicated in a B2B negotiation can be initiators (those who detect the need and start the process: users), influencers and consultants (technical staff advising the upper hierarchies: engineers, lawyers), deciders (management and administration), approvers (financial analysts and accountants), buyers (procurement), and auditors.
Traditional B2B marketing presumes a close customer/supplier relationship and the use of a sales force for both research and communication. Whereas in the past transactions used to be personal and private, future directions include high technology, online marketing, and social networks. B2B marketing already accounts for more than 80 percent of e-commerce, with CRM and data analysis being important and increasingly developing research matters. Globalization and cultural differences pose pressing challenges to this area. Collaborative marketing is forecasted as another relevant trend.
See also: Marketing Definition and History
