The terms B2B, B2B2C and B2X are well known, and everyone knows what they mean. What's often missing, though, is differentiation. The market is made up of many different kinds of companies, product applications and target groups. Telling them apart matters, because the user journeys and needs differ. So there's really no such thing as "the" B2B.
The only constant is that everyone we address is a person. Depending on their role, the same person is a B2C customer, a B2B buyer or something else. That same buyer gathers information almost exclusively online and is influenced by everything they read and see. Even so, in companies you often have to deal with decision-making bodies, and it isn't a single employee who makes the call. Before an organization buys something from another company, it often needs meetings and established processes to evaluate it. So you need to know who's involved. A buyer has different information needs than a decision-maker from another department.
The different forms of B2B
There are B2B companies in every industry, from manufacturing to retail. Broadly speaking, you can distinguish three groups: suppliers, distributors and customers. Customers can be B2C customers as well as B2B consumables customers. Consumables customers are customers who need supplies, e.g. a business that needs cleaning products or printer paper. Heinemann (2020) has put together a nice overview that distinguishes between industrial goods and consumer goods.
Online stores and B2B relationships
Depending on the B2B company and the relationship in question, the requirements for an online store vary. If the hypothetical supplier CleanAll sells cleaning products to distributor X, the B2B relationship is different than if CleanAll sold the same products to, say, Astina. Distributor X knows the products much better and knows exactly what it's looking for. It also orders in much larger quantities and may buy every week or even several times a day. Astina might buy cleaning products only once every one to two months, doesn't know CleanAll's product range well at all and relies more on lifestyle images and product information. Distributor X needs a different ordering solution than Astina. Both customer groups can work perfectly well side by side on a single infrastructure or backend system. But they will most likely need different frontends, so that the user journey fits both.
The IT landscape of the future
At Astina, we're constantly preparing for the future. Maybe wholesale won't exist at all in the future, or B2B as we know it will disappear entirely. Maybe there won't be any buyers anymore, just algorithms that narrow down the options and automatically pick the best price, the best quality, or the most sustainable or eco-friendly choice. Whatever happens, a lot will change for companies, and the IT landscape will keep evolving. Companies that choose the right IT infrastructure will succeed in the economic structure of the future. They'll be able to find new markets, renew their offering and give their customers what they need.
Header image: Photo by Sol on Unsplash