12 New Rules of B2B Product Launch

Once a decision is made to develop a business, whom the customer will be is the next decision to be made. Whom will the company target as a customer? Will it be a business? Or will it be a consumer? Business-to-business (B2B) marketing has differences from business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing practices. This paper will outline these differences between the two types of e-commerce business transactions.

​A Porter analysis will be performed throughout this paper, on the internet sales industry. Included in the Porter analysis is six relative competitive forces; threat of new entrants, rivalry amongst firms, threat of substitute services, bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers, and relative power of other stakeholders.

In the era of smart businesses, the growth of e-commerce is driven largely by the internet and digital technology, the advent of smart-phones and the increasing disposable income of the people, especially of young working professionals. Moreover, the sedentary work culture and hectic routine life are compelling both consumers and businesses to go online - a revolutionary marketplace to save time as well as money. This is all about B2C companies; there are several B2B portals that assist start-up firms in expanding their reach, penetration and the overall revenue. According to the Forrester Research, B2B e-commerce sales is more than 200 percent of the size of B2C e-commerce and it is expected to touch the $12 trillion sales figure worldwide by 2020. Moreover, If we talk about India only, a study done by Walmart in 2014, tells that India's B2B e-commerce industry will grow to $700 billion by 2020.

The new advances in technology allow businesses to reach different customer bases. This includes buying and selling products over the Internet. The online shopping process is considered e-commerce. E-commerce is made up of different behaviors but for the purpose of this discussion the three discussed are consumer-to-consumer (C2C), business-to-business (B2B), and consumer-to-business (C2B). The different behaviors have different mediums to reach their targeted audience. The message for each behavior persuades a particular audience to purchase a product using that particular medium. Consumers and businesses look to the web for cost-effective ways to sell and buy products.

Through the years, brick and mortar buildings seemed to have been the most effective way of having a successful business. Today, with the creation of the internet many businesses now have the opportunity to reach millions of customers and other businesses worldwide. The internet has caused an enormous surge in the world 's economy through business to customer (B2C) and business to business (B2B) transactions. According to Nariane (2003), in 2003 B2B sales worldwide accounted for $1.41 trillion. B2C sales accounted for

One strategy to determine your audience is to discover who your audience is. Does your

“Business-to-business (B2B) exchanges or marketplaces provide dramatic opportunities to automate collaborative business processes with customers and suppliers, generate internal efficiencies, and reach new markets at minimal cost.” - (Kenjale & Phatak, 2002)

B2B buying decisions are no longer simple matters that the company president or purchasing manager decides based on long-term loyalty, cronyism or the ability to get a good deal. Customers are following a more complex decision-making process that involves using platform-enabled support services and assessing each B2B company’s credibility, ordering convenience, ability to customize products, social chatter about the company, customer reviews, business ratings and customer service processes for providing quick answers to product questions to assuage increased product skepticism. The authority to make decisions has drifted from single key company officers to multiple business stakeholders and buying committees. However, a classic loyalty-generating strategy still works in the digital environment as well as it ever did in wholesale and retail sales in face-to-face encounters. Offering customers in-house accounts for making B2B purchases offers strong incentives for companies to do business with any given eCommerce platform, and software customizations and automations update this classic practice for the digital age of instant communications.

Brooksbank, R. (1994). The Anatomy of Marketing Positioning Strategy.Marketing Intelligence & Planning. 12 (4), pp. 10-14

Finding out what is relevant to your ideal customer is a crucial first step in optimizing content.

1. Determine what segments of people are most likely to respond well to your products. Narrow the

During the last decades the world has seen an unprecedented considerable growth in information and communication technology, in fact thanks to internet, most of the countries in the world are linked together via satellite and servers networks, and it keeps growing at an exponential rate. This revolutionary change has impacted the behavior of people in doing business and which had risen e-commerce.

Our main goal is to launch a new marketing campaign that will effectively target our key audience in the right way. To achieve this we need more understanding of our key audience and their behaviours.

Over the thousands of years that people have engaged in commerce with other, it has adopted the tools and technologies that became available. The combined influence of continuing sales growth and rising operating costs has caused the company to consider whether it could move the entire sales operation onto the Internet.

You can seek to customer wants and needs as they always will change, this will make your strategy driven by customers which will give a competitive edge over others.