Marketing Comparisons

Running head: MARKETING COMPARISONS

Marketing Comparisons

Carl Stange

University of Phoenix

E-Business

EBUS/400

Doug Martin, MBA, CISA

March 17, 2007

Marketing Comparisons

Marketing is a significant aspect within the world of business. The consideration of marketing is of such value that in the words of Philip Kotler, "Marketing takes a day to learn. Unfortunately, it takes a lifetime to master." This fact is no different in the realm of ebusiness. There are dissimilarities in the application of marketing in the business to consumer and the business-to-business scenarios. The concentration of this research will be spent on these divergent functions of marketing.

Much of the popular press has given increased attention to the business to consumer Web sites. On the contrary, business-to-business sites are conducting even more activity. The business-to-business sites are changing the supplier-customer relationship in profound ways. Firms are using business-to-business auction sites, spot exchanges, online product catalogs, barter sites, and other online resources to obtain better prices. One may note that, "in 2002, LendingTree.com brokered 1.5 million loans on behalf of 170 lenders" (Blythe, 2006). These retail loans are an ideal commodity to trade online. This is because the loan process is highly standardized, the lending industry is fragmented, and large volumes of transactions allow small profit margins to add up in a sizeable matter.

These business-to business Web sites have to keep in mind to whom they are marketing. Businesses want to buy long-term dependable relationships as well as the product and/or service. Dependability is of increased importance due to just in time inventories. Moreover, marketing to businesses has to keep the aforementioned in mind when creating strategy.

Post-click marketing is one example of marketing directed in the context of business-to-business and business to consumer. In fact, according Talerico (2007), Post-click marketing a set of best practices and techniques to improve a user's experience when they respond to an online marketing such as email, paid search, and direct mail campaigns with the objective being to increase conversion rates of the most qualified respondents while escalating real-time marketing knowledge. The idea is that between the initial click on the banner ad and the actual conversion, on make think of the process as a funnel to which a potential client is becoming more qualified on their way to conversion of the sale. This middle portion of the funnel is the area of the post-click domain. More attention is being placed in this mysterious region since the statistics show that, "only three percent of initial banner clicks result in conversion" (Brinker, 2007).

Although the marketing programs can be the same for each type of business, whether business-to-business or business to consumer, how they are executed, what is said, and the outcome of the marketing activities differ. The following table summarizes the differences between the business-to-business marketing and business to consumer marketing (Murphy, 2006):

The strategy of marketing for business-to-business differs from marketing to business to consumers in nine important ways. First, consider more decision makers are typically involved in business decisions. The Webster-Wind classification includes: initiators, users, deciders, influencers, buyers, and gatekeepers. Secondly, businesses often have professional buyers on staff, with superb buying experience within the buying categories with which they deal. Thirdly, there tends to be fewer buyers when business-to-business transaction are involved. An industrial sales representative may have only 30 to 40 regular customers, whereas home improvement salesmen might have hundreds of customers during the course of a year. The fourth major distinction is that businesses are inclined to buy increased order quantities over that of the individual consumer. The fifth difference is demand. Businesses derived their demand from consumer markets, which is not the case of the individual