Business to Business versus Business to Consumer

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to review the supply chain differences between Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C). We shall see that the major differences are the negotiations of sales and the integration of systems.

Introduction

B2B (Business to Business) sites specifically cater one business to another business. They are usually providing in-house service or maintenance software/networks for other businesses to utilize in order to increase function, marketing, sales, profits, efficiency and the like. Examples: Microsoft.com, Macromedia.com, Marketing sites, crmguru.com, basically anything targeting business owners, managers, and decision makers.

B2C (Business to Consumer) sites specifically cater to a group or target consumer in order to expose, sell, market, etc goods or services to the public. Examples: Amazon.com, ebay.com, Walmart.com, Borders.com, basically anything offering a retail product to the public in the form of a virtual store.

Business to Business

In simple words B2B commerce can be defined as "doing business electronically" or business that is conducted over the Internet.

What's in the bag? Business of Software 2010

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Mean Business

It is most commonly associated with buying and selling information, products and services via the Internet or through the use of private networks shared among business partners. B2B can also be defined as exchanging of structured messages with other business partners over private networks or Internet to create and transform business relationships.

B2B exchanges, also called eMarkets, are playing a crucial role in today's digital economy. EMarkets are building capabilities to host critical supply chain applications, providing support to cross enterprise collaboration. This results in what is being termed as "synchronized industry coordination". This allows companies to synchronize activities like product design, procurement, transportation planning, production planning and marketing. Emarkets provide the participants with an open, flexible, reliable, highly available, and scalable environment. Its functionality spans an array of capabilities that cross business processes delivering the...