Business to Business Marketing

There are many different types of organisations:

Institutional oganisations:

• Not for profit
• Community-based organisations

Government organisations:

• Health
• Environmental protection
• Education
• Policing
• Transport
• National defence and security

Commercial organisations:

• Distributors
• Original equipment manufacturers
• Users
• Retailers

All of which are working alongside one another to supply each other with all the different elements required to make their businesses a success. The main method for businesses to do this is through personal selling, often taking the form of a sales person pitching the relevant information to the other business. Business to business marketing is vast as there are so many of them and so many different elements that contribute to a business such as the manufacturer, the distributer and the supplier, and B2B transactions will tend to be of higher value but fewer transactions than B2C (business to consumer), and because of this it will make it highly important for B2B to keep hold of their customers, which in turn means that they must work harder on building a relationship with their customer.

We were set a task in lesson today to look at three different companies: Coca-Cola, a financial software company and an MRI scanner manufacturer. Working in groups we were to consider the number of potential customers to each company. For example starting with coca cola in the UK alone they potentially have around 50 million customers whereas a financial service software company have hundreds they will consist of all banks, mortgage lenders, loan companies and building societies. however the MRI scanner manufacturers comes in with the fewest customer being 1 which is the NHS. In terms of marketing the fewer customers you have the more you are going to get to know your customers on a more personal level.
Each different company will use different stages of Kotlers buying decision process mentioned in previous blogs. for example coca-cola use thre out of the 5 stages: Need recognition, evaluation of alternative and purchase. The other 2 companies will use all 5 stages in the process.
we then looked at which FTPEPS applied to these individual companies, broken down this is Finance, Time, Performance, Ego, Physical and Social. It would seem that Coca- cola had none of these, whereas the MRI scanner had all of them indicating the major difference between the B2C company and B2B company.

Becuase there are few substitutes for B2B the demand for products is likely to be more inelastic. this means it will be harder to simulate sales through price cuts and promotions etc but it also m,eand that the marketer can set the price. So the bottom line is if a business needs a product then it needs a product therefore no matter what the price the product is essential.