Week 4 EOC: Business-to-Business

Consumer marketing deals with a business directly working with the end of the business chain – the consumer.  Businessdictionary.com takes it a step further and states consumer markets “are typically split into four primary categories: consumer products, food and beverage products, retail products, and transportation products.”  Businesses have many approaches in selling to consumers.  According to an article from Businessweek.com, there are five fundamentals to keep customers as a main focus.  Listed number three is “A customer’s journey is a circle, not a straight line.”  Procter & Gamble’s example paints this clear as they begin “finding women who are pregnant…and stay involved in their lives with a wide range of products…and as their families grow, these moms start their journey with P&G again.”  This fundamental almost guarantees secure income from a consumer as long as the customer is happy with the product. 

The importance in business-to-business (b-to-b) marketing is simply put this way from Armstrong & Kotler’s Marketing: An Introduction, 10^th Ed. Page 158: “Whereas it might be disappointing when a refriedgerator buyer chooses a competing brand, losing a single sale to a large business customer can mean the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in business.”   From the purchaser’s point of view in b-to-b, the more it can profit from purchasing from the seller also is a huge selling point.  Again from Armstrong & Kotler’s book page 158, GE’s locomotive’s “If every fright locomotoive in North America were as clean as GE’s…annual reduction of emmissions would compare to removing 48 million cars from the road each year.”  This is a huge selling point for a buyer, who can claim that its company uses eco-friendly equipment with it’s $2.2 milliion dollar purchase of GE’s locomotive!  As we spoke of P&G earlier, a visit to their website, www.pgpro.com, shows their b-to-b plan is “We’re committed to boosting your sales, increasing your efficiencies, and improving your profitability.”  B-to-b is the hidden side of business we don’t see, yet it plays a huge role in the businesses getting us the products we want and serves as a support system for the businesses.