Value Chain Differences Between B2C and B2B Organizations E-Bus 400

Essay by JilykaUniversity, Master'sA+, May 2005

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Value Chain Differences Between B2C and B2B Organizations

E-Business, as defined by Wikipedia, an Internet encyclopedia, "is any information system or application that empowers business processes (Wikipedia.org, 2005)." With e-businesses, the internet becomes the hub for all business activities. Simply stated, it just means conducting or doing business over the internet. There are several distinct benefits to doing business over the internet. These benefits include the ability to reach a greater number of people and entities that are interested in doing business with you, to create cost-savings and operational efficiencies, improving marketing and promotional activities, as well as many additional benefits. With the progression of eCommerce, which is the buying and selling of products and services via the internet, e-business has broken off into several components, two of which are Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B).

Business-to-Consumer or B2C commerce refers to the buying and selling of products and services online from the retailer to the customer.

It involves the "consumers shopping for and buying personal and household products. It also requires businesses to use online marketing and merchandising techniques to attract and retain customers as well as to promote products and services to them (eCommerce Program, 2005)." An example of a successful Business-to-Consumer website would be Target.com. Just like the regular brick and mortar store, consumers can log onto the site and shop for personal and household items. There are no intermediaries to go through, the consumer just adds items to his or her shopping cart and when finished, checks out with a credit card or online check. In a Business-to-Consumer environment, most functions of the company are handled or are available to the consumer via the internet from sales to customer support. One of the advantages to online B2C method is the unlimited availability of the...