Business Marketing

Through out this past semester, we have studied all the aspects of successful marketing, often to consumers. But this chapter discusses something a bit different- marketing to businesses. Apple has been successful at marketing to both consumers and businesses because its computers and now iPads are creating a product that can satisfy the needs of the consumer and the business, in one. After all, a business person is still a consumer when he/she goes home, so why not have a product that transcends both worlds seamlessly?
Business-to-business electronic commerce (B2B e-commerce) has revolutionized the way companies do business in the 21st century. Exchanging goods and services is now as simple and easy as a click and a few key strokes. This has, however, created problems for marketers and how they determine who is buying what. So they use three factors to measure online success. Recency says that consumers who have recently made a purchase are more likely to make a purchase again very soon than consumers who haven't purchased in a long time. Frequency identifies consumers who purchase often and are very likely to continue purchasing. Marketers also look at monetary value, because those who spend more are more likely to keep buying more. Together these elements can tell a lot about a company's online success.
This data is sometimes also used in addition to other statistics to determine stickiness. Stickiness is determined by: frequency x duration x site reach. Measuring stickiness frequently and after certain changes are made to the site can be extremely informative in determining whether changes made are improving site activity. B2B is a growing market and companies need to reevaluate the methods they use to get information out to consumers, especially growing medias such as RSS and social networks.
When the internet first had its boom, businesses thought that it would change the way business is done by eliminating the intermediaries such as resellers or wholesalers because consumers would want to pay less by buying direct from the producer of the product. This is called disintermediation. But this was not so, and businesses still needed to use distributers for many reasons to make business easier. Providing only a direct online purchase option was similar to having only one store in NYC and it was unsuccessful because it couldnt meet the individual demand. Therefor they introduced reintermediation.
With the internet taking over the business industry, creating relationships, an important aspect of business, has become much easier. Companies can build strategic alliances to strengthen operations.