B2B or B2C Ecommerce - Opportunity and Decisions

For B2C businesses, ecommerce represents an opportunity to gather information that informs decisions on product features, pricing and promotion. The opportunity to gather data is also available to B2B businesses, but in a relationship-centric world, the first objective is to increase value to customers.

In a B2C businesses, once an ecommerce solution is in operation, self-service ordering on line allows customers over an endless geography to place orders with little marginal cost to the B2C provider.

In a B2B setting, similar benefits can be achieved by making a simple portion of the overall offering available as a “starter” or “entry level offer” for prospective customers. Current customers may value an option of buying simple product extensions or contract renewals online. The efficiency of these simple on line transactions is a benefit to both the B2B business and to its customers.

In B2C businesses, customers have access to information about products, their personal information on file, their order history, and other related information. That’s a great start, but many B2B businesses have the opportunity to deliver more value by providing more information such as maintenance and service records, contract and correspondence history, information about customer installations, product roadmaps, and lead time.

On business to business portal many manufacturers, wholesale suppliers, exporters, traders etc. are registered to do online business trade. The business leads are converted into real deals. Those who are experienced professionals, able to provide spontaneous solution and are able to understand the business requirement can highly succeed in Business to Business marketplaces.

In some cases, such as installation maintenance locations, customers may get value from maintaining the information themselves. B2B businesses can use these information resources to efficiently differentiate and personalize their customers experience.