Business-to-business (B2B) marketing, formerly known as industrial marketing, concerns marketing activities between organizations: companies, governments, institutions, or NGOs. B2B marketing particularities mean fewer customers but more stakeholders, more complex decisions, larger quantities, and higher sums of money involved. Consumers are titled customers. The most important customers exert various forms of power over their providers, often determining prices, sales conditions, deadlines, and product customization details. Rationality and efficiency prevail in decision-making, which is chiefly oriented to best price choices. Purchase procedures are usually formalized, routinized, multistage, and requiring advanced technical expertise from the parts involved. Traditional B2B marketing presumes a close customer/supplier relationship and the use of a sales force. B2B marketing already accounts for more than 80 percent of e-commerce, with CRM and data analysis being important and increasingly developing research matters.
Raquel Barbosa Ribeiro,
Isabel Soares
The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Consumption and Consumer Studies
Published Online: 24 MAR 2015
DOI: 10.1002/9781118989463.wbeccs013