Do B2B and B2C Still Mean Anything?

September 2018

A survey of 6,700 individual consumers as well as business buyers suggests that the rest of the world is catching on to something the public affairs profession already understands, even if it has yet to fully articulate this important operating principle: The terms B2C and B2B might just be obsolete.

The survey, conducted by Salesforce Research and summarized in its State of the Connected Customer report, finds that business buyers are just as likely to value the experience of dealing with the organization selling them a product or service as is the everyday consumer buying a book from Amazon or a sweater from Lands’ End. Customer experience is something we’ve almost exclusively associated with B2C buying and selling, not B2B.

Treated as Individuals

Survey participants in 17 countries told Salesforce that they want to feel they are treated as individuals when they buy something, not a number. That 84 percent of consumers have this expectation isn’t surprising. But that 83 percent of business buyers say the same thing is news.

In fact, Peter Schwartz of Salesforce, writing in Strategy+Business, says that business buyers “are more demanding than individual purchasers when it comes to customer experience. [The research] found that 74 percent of business customers, compared with 63 percent of consumers, will pay more for a better customer experience. A similar share of business buyers (81 percent) and consumers (79 percent) agree that the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. More business buyers (77 percent) than consumers (70 percent) also say they share good customer experiences with others. For today’s buyers, customer experience rules.”

Conventional Categories

Schwartz says we need to replace the conventional categories of B2B and B2C with something he calls B2I, with I standing for “individual.” This seems a bit facile. After all, once you’ve merged the old categories, you’ve pretty much eliminated any explanatory power either might have, which is still valuable. Even so, it is useful to realize the extent to which business buyers, which we often assume are almost exclusively concerned with price and performance, also value customer experience.

But public affairs professionals, whether they work for B2B or B2C companies, in some ways already incorporate a form of this insight into their jobs. Their work offers ample evidence that the old categories are not as rigid as some might assume.

B2C companies, for example, face complex legislative and regulatory issues as businesses and not just as providers of goods and services to individuals. They lobby routinely on tax, regulatory and labor issues.

It’s Complicated

B2B companies, by the same token, are also employers. That means they represent the interests of individuals who work for them and live in the communities where the companies do business. Their experience as employees is important, as is their experience as residents of those communities. Often, the public affairs professional lobbies on their behalf. B2B companies also conduct grassroots campaigns, taking messages directly to individuals, not just to business buyers.

There are important insights in the new study, which leads to thoughtful recommendations about how B2B companies can apply techniques that B2C companies like Amazon have pioneered. The research has started a constructive conversation to which the public affairs profession has much to contribute.