Business-to-business marketing
К содержанию номера журнала: Вестник КАСУ №4 - 2007
Автор: Кабатова К. Г.
In today's
marketplace, it takes more than good technology, product or competitive pricing
to be successful. Companies need a business to business marketing strategy and
business-to-business marketing prospects to reach their present and future
goals.
While the
term "marketing" usually conjures images of consumer packaged goods
and advertising campaigns, business-to-business marketing is expected to dwarf
the consumer side of the business in the next decade.
More
important than its relative size, however, business-to-business marketing is a
complex discipline that has become integral to selling products or services to
business, industrial, institutional, or government buyers.
In the broadest sense,
the practice of one purveyor of goods doing trade with another is as old as
commerce itself. In his introduction to Fundamentals of Business Marketing Research [5], J. David Lichtenthal, professor of marketing at the City
University of New York's Zicklin School of Business, notes that industrial
marketing has been around since the mid-19th century, although the
bulk of research on the discipline of business marketing has come about in the
last 25 years.
Morris, Pitt and
Honeycutt [4] point out that for many years business marketing took a back seat
to consumer marketing, which entailed providers of goods or services selling
directly to households through mass media and retail channels. This began to
change in middle to late1970s. A variety of academic periodicals, such as the Journal of
Business-to-Business Marketing and the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, now publish
studies on the subject regularly, and professional conferences on business-to-business
marketing are held every year. What's more, business marketing
courses are commonplace at many universities today. In fact, more marketing
majors begin their careers in business marketing today than in consumer
marketing.
Business
marketing, sometimes called business-to-business marketing or industrial marketing,
involves those marketing activities and functions that are targeted toward
organizational customers [6]. This type of marketing involves selling goods
(and services) to organizations (public and private) to be used directly or
indirectly in their own production or service-delivery operations. Some of the
major industries that comprise the business market are construction,
manufacturing, mining, transportation, public utilities, communications, and
distribution. One of the key points that differentiates business from consumer
marketing is the magnitude of the transactions. For example, in the mid-1990s,
a Boeing 747 airliner, selling for about $155 million, could take up to four
years to manufacture and deliver once the order was placed. Often, a major
airline company will order several aircraft at one time, making the purchase
price as high as a billion dollars.
In past
decades, innovative products, great engineering, or great salesmanship alone
might have been enough to close a business sale. But today’s shorter product
life cycles and the intense pressures of global competition no longer allow the
luxury of “build it and they will come” thinking.
Professors
James C. Anderson of Northwestern University, and James C. Narus of Wake Forest
University capture the essence of business-to-business market management in the
title of their recent book, Business Market Management: Understanding,
Creating, and Delivering Value [1]. They cut right to the heart of the
business-marketing mission—creating and transferring value along the business
value chain at a profit.
Understanding
the total value chain is becoming more crucial to business marketers today.
From basic raw materials down through the end game — including not only product
use but also through recycling and safe product disposal — orchestrating the
value delivered at each stage of the chain becomes the goal of business
marketing.
Although not
every firm can wield power downstream in its markets, many succeed by taking
full responsibility for value delivery all the way to the end consumer. They
deploy not only the special tools of the business marketer, but understand —
and sometimes take the initiative to use — the tools of the consumer marketer
as well.
Propelled by
new marketing and communication technologies, business-to-business (B2B) and
business-to-customer (B2C) are converging across many industries. The business
marketer needs to understand how both play together to create and deliver value
downstream. Business marketers focus on a few customers, with usually much
larger, complex, technically oriented sales processes. Statistical tools, data
mining techniques, and other sorts of research that work so well in the land of
consumer marketing where data sets are huge, must be fine-tuned and specially
applied in the practice of the business marketer.
The turbulent
markets of the early 2000s lead people to joke that B2B now means “back to
basics” and that B2C now refers to “back to cost.” But the real differences
between marketing to businesses and marketing to consumers aren’t trivial.
Although on the surface they may seem obvious, there are more subtle
distinctions between the two with substantial ramifications.
Business-to-business
marketing features:
-
Transactions among and within value chains.
- Value
primarily determined by business economic use.
- Small
numbers of customers, many requiring personalized marketing, including
customized products and prices.
- Large
customers with formidable market power. (In B2B, your customers often are also your
competitors.) Widely varying customer types and customer needs.
- Large-unit
transactions.
- Complex and
lengthy selling processes involving many players creating a demand decision
chain.
- Deeper
partnerships with members of the value chain, including customers.
- Channel
management oriented up and down the supply chain.
- Sales
focused on key account management, and multiple purchasing influencers (many of
whom are not likely to be end users themselves).
Business-to-Consumer
features:
- Transactions
through the dealer to the end consumer.
- Value
determined by end-consumer perception.
- Focus on
brand management.
- Large
number of generally similar consumers.
- Small
transactions.
- Linear
selling process, usually of short duration.
- Channel
management oriented toward retail.
- Sales
activity focused on the end user.
In a word,
business marketing involves building profitable, value-oriented relationships
between two businesses and many individuals within them.
In B2C
marketing, marketers often capitalize on the anticipation of positive emotion
by appealing to aspirational feelings such as desire. In contrast, the
strongest B2B brands capitalize on the avoidance of negative emotions. This is
because there is an asymmetry between the upside and downside of B2B purchases:
the buyer does not experience the full benefit of the solution directly and may
or not be rewarded for making a good purchase, but a bad purchase can destroy
the buyer's reputation and damage job security.
Business-to-business
marketing professionals are faced with challenges similar to their consumer
marketer counterparts. Gone are the days of business as usual. Competition has
heightened, niches have emerged and business resources have been reduced in
response to economic conditions. As a result, companies are losing market
share, profit margins are declining and there is increasing demand for critical
business to business marketing data, B2B marketing research and small business
marketing research.
Business
customers, also known as industrial customers, purchase products or services to
use in the production of other products [6]. Such industries include
agriculture, manufacturing, construction, transportation, and communication,
among others. They differ from consumer markets in several respects. Because
the customers are organizations, the market tends to have fewer and larger
buyers than consumer markets. This often results in closer buyer-seller
relationships, because those who operate in a market must depend more significantly
on one another for supply and revenue.
Business
customers also are more concentrated; for instance, in the United States more
than half of the country's business buyers are concentrated in only seven
states. Demand for business goods is derived demand, which means it is driven
by a demand for consumer goods. Therefore, demand for business goods is more
volatile, because variations in consumer demand can have a significant impact
on business-goods demand. Business markets are also distinctive in that buyers
are professional purchasers who are highly skilled in negotiating contracts and
maximizing efficiency. In addition, several individuals within the business
usually have direct or indirect influence on the purchasing process.
Customer for
industrial goods can be divided into three groups: user customers,
original-equipment manufacturers, and resellers. User customers make use of the
goods they purchase in their own businesses. An automobile manufacturer, for
example, might purchase a metal-stamping press to produce parts for its
vehicles. Original-equipment manufacturers incorporate the purchased goods into
their final products, which are then sold to final consumers (e.g., the
manufacturer of television receivers buys tubes and transistors). Industrial
resellers are middlemen - essentially wholesalers but in some cases retailers -
who distribute goods to user customers, to original-equipment manufacturers,
and to other middlemen. Industrial-goods wholesalers include mill-supply
houses, steel warehouses, machine-tool dealers, paper jobbers, and chemical
distributors.
Although
business customers are affected by the same cultural, social, personal, and
psychological factors that influence consumer customers, the business arena
imposes other factors that can be even more influential. First, there is the
economic environment, which is characterized by such factors as primary demand,
economic forecast, political and regulatory developments, and the type of
competition in the market. In a highly competitive market such as airline
travel, firms may be concerned about price and therefore make purchases with a
focus on saving money. In markets where there is more differentiation among
competitors - e.g., in the hotel industry - many firms may make purchases with
a focus on quality rather than on price.
Second, there
are organizational factors, which include the objectives, policies, procedures,
structures, and systems that characterize any particular company. Some
companies are structured in such a way that purchases must pass through a
complex system of checks and balances, while other companies allow purchasing
managers to make more individual decisions. Interpersonal factors are more
salient among business customers, because the participants in the buying process
- perhaps representing several departments within a company - often have
different interests, authority, and persuasiveness. Furthermore, the factors
that affect an individual in the business buying process are related to the
participant's role in the organization. These factors include job position,
risk attitudes, and income.
Hutt and Speh
[3] note that "business marketers serve the largest market of all; the
dollar volume of transactions in the industrial or business market
significantly exceeds that of the ultimate consumer market." For example,
they note that companies such as GE, DuPont and IBM spend more than $60 million
a day on purchases to support their operations.
Dwyer and
Tanner say the purchases made by companies, government agencies and institutions
"account for more than half of the economic activity in industrialized
countries such as the United States, Canada and France."
A 2003 study
sponsored by the Business Marketing
Association (BMA) [2] estimated that business-to-business
marketers in the United States spend about $85 billion a year to promote their
goods and services. The BMA study breaks that spending out as follows (figures
are in billions of dollars):
- Trade Shows/Events --
$17.3
- Internet/Electronic
Media -- $12.5
- Promotion/Market
Support -- $10.9
- Magazine Advertising
-- $10.8
- Publicity/Public
Relations -- $10.5
- Direct Mail -- $9.4
- Dealer/Distributor
Materials -- $5.2
- Market Research --
$3.8
- Telemarketing -- $2.4
- Directories -- $1.4
- Other -- $5.1
The fact that
there is such a thing as the Business Marketing Association speaks to the size
and credibility of the industry. BMA traces its origins to 1922 with the
formation of the National Industrial Advertising Association. Today, BMA,
headquartered in Chicago, boasts more than 2,000 members in 19 chapters across
the country. Among its members are a new breed of marketing communications
agencies that are largely or exclusively business-to-business-oriented.
The tremendous
growth and change that business marketing is experiencing is due in large part
to three "revolutions" occurring around the world today, according to
Morris, Pitt and Honeycutt [4].
First is the
technological revolution. Technology is changing at an unprecedented pace, and
these changes are speeding up the pace of new product and service development.
A large part of that has to do with the Internet.
Second is the
entrepreneurial revolution. To stay competitive, many companies have downsized
and reinvented themselves. Adaptability, flexibility, speed, aggressiveness and
innovativeness are the keys to remaining competitive today. Marketing is taking
the entrepreneurial lead by finding market segments, untapped needs and new
uses for existing products, and by creating new processes for sales,
distribution and customer service.
The third
revolution is one occurring within marketing itself. Companies are looking
beyond traditional assumptions and adopting new frameworks, theories, models
and concepts. They're also moving away from the mass market and the
preoccupation with the transaction. Relationships, partnerships and alliances
are what define marketing today. Companies are customizing marketing programs
to individual accounts.
Marketing in
the business-to-business arena is unlike anything the creators of the trade
magazine advertisement/personal sales relationship model ever anticipated. With
the growth of the Internet, and the exponential increase in the information
available online, the business-to-business model resembles the
business-to-customer model much more closely than ever before.
The Internet
has become an integral component of the customer relationship management
strategy for business marketers. Dwyer and Tanner [3] note that business
marketers not only use the Internet to improve customer service but also to
improve opportunities with distributors.
According to
Anderson and Narus [1], two new types of resellers have emerged as by-products
of the Internet: infomediaries and metamediaries. Infomediaries, such as Google and Yahoo, are search
engine companies that also function as brokers, or middlemen, in the business
marketing world. They charge companies fees to find information on the Web as
well as for banner and pop-up ads and search engine optimization services. Metamediaries,
such as W.W. Grainger, are
companies with robust Internet sites that furnish customers with multiproduct, multivendor
and multiservice marketspace in return for commissions on sales.
With the
advent of business-to-business exchanges, the Internet ushered in an enthusiasm
for collaboration that never existed before--and in fact might have even seemed
ludicrous 10 years ago. For example, a decade ago who would have imagined Ford,
General Motors and DaimlerChrysler entering into a joint venture? That's
exactly what happened after all three of the Big Three began moving their
purchases online in the late 1990s. All three companies were pursuing their own
initiatives when they realized the economies of scale they could achieve by
pooling their efforts. Thus was born what then was the world's largest Internet
business when Ford's Auto-Xchange and GM's TradeXchange merged, with
DaimlerChrysler representing the third partner.
While this
exchange did not stand the test of time, others have, including Agentrics, LLC, which was formed last year with the
merger of WorldWide Retail Exchange and GlobalNetXchange, or GNX. Agentrics
serves more 50 retailers around the world and more than 300 customers, and its
members have combined sales of about $1 trillion. Hutt and Speh [3] note that
such virtual marketplaces enable companies and their suppliers to conduct
business in real time as well as simplify purchase processes and cut costs.
The new tools
and techniques of the digital era will enable us to understand, create, and
deliver value with even greater efficiency and effectiveness. New channels for
communication, supply chain integration, demand forecasting, and transaction
management will be possible. Innovative market experiments are underway as
aggregators, portals, price discovery, reverse auctions, and other e-business
dynamics come into play.
Although
consumer-oriented online commerce captures more of the headlines — good and bad
— B2B is the realm promising the most e-business activity. The size and
frequency of individual transactions and the large dollar value of
supplier-buyer relationships make B2B fertile ground for information
automation.
Digital
technologies enable us to tap storehouses of technical knowledge and move them
into complex offerings. Custom extranets enable virtual integration of a firm’s
competencies up and down its value chain and provide new dimensions in sales
support.
A greater
understanding is required of business-to-business marketing as its development
dynamics is impressive and may soon dwarf significance of consumer marketing.
REFERENCES
1.
Anderson, James C., and Narus, James A. (2004) Business Market Management:
Understanding, Creating, and Delivering Value, 2nd Edition, 2004, Pearson
Education, Inc.
2.
Business Marketing Association (2003) "Marketing Reality Survey"
3.
Dwyer, F. Robert, Tanner, John F. (2006) Business Marketing: Connecting
Strategy, Relationships, and Learning, 3rd Edition, McGraw-Hill/Irwin
4.
Hutt, Michael D., Speh, Thomas W. (2001) Business Marketing Management: A
Strategic View of Industrial and Organizational Markets, 7th Edition, Harcourt
Inc.
5.
Morris, Michael H., Pitt, Leyland F., and Honeycutt, Earl Dwight (2001)
Business-to-Business Marketing: A Strategic Approach, Sage Publications Inc.
6.
Reid, David A., and Plank, Richard E. (2004) Fundamentals of Business Marketing
Research, Best Business Books, an Imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.
7.
Retrieved from Britannica 2001 Standard Edition CD-ROM.
8.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
К содержанию номера журнала: Вестник КАСУ №4 - 2007
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