The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Consumption and Consumer Studies

B2B Marketing

RAQUEL BARBOSA RIBEIRO and ISABEL SOARES

University of Lisbon, Portugal

DOI: 10.1002/9781118989463.wbeccs013

Business-to-business (B2B) marketing concerns marketing activities between organizations: companies, governments, institutions, or NGOs. B2B marketing particularities, when compared to the most common typology of marketing relations, known as business-to-consumers or B2C, mean fewer customers but more stakeholders, more complex decisions, larger quantities, and higher sums of money involved, product customization, and the prevalence of rational motivations, oriented either for profit or for the public interest.

B2B marketing was formerly known as industrial marketing, referring to the transactions of products, raw materials, and supplies for other businesses. Having gained serious scholarly interest from the 1960 onward, B2B marketing accounts for relatively few scientific contributions when compared to B2C marketing, as Grewal and Lilien (2012) note. Besides the generalist marketing journals, research on B2B marketing is found in specialized journals, including Industrial Marketing Management, the Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, and the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing.

In B2B, consumers are titled customers or clients. B2B markets are characterized by relatively few, yet powerful, customers whose acquisitions are considerable in terms of units, volume, and value. Frequently, a small number of customers represent a high share of the ...