B2B e-commerce refers to the online purchasing of goods and services by one company from another. Some of the most successful
included Choco, Everphone, and Lendis, with the first receiving around 275 million U.S. dollars in funding. E-commerce is an established method of sale between companies and consumers, as well as businesses. It has many advantages, such as allowing the business to expand its customer base and reach new clients. With the emergence of channels such as social commerce and the constant improvement of user experience, it is clear that this market will continue to grow over the next decade.
Financial situation of B2B companies in Germany
Although the current economic climate in Germany is not as strong as in previous years due to inflation and the decreasing number of exports in recent months, over half of B2B companies in Germany judged the
economic situation of their own company as good. Furthermore, the B2B e-commerce
revenue of physical goods is forecast to continue increasing with predictions of around 39 percent growth from 2022 to 2025. This rise in revenue does not occur when companies are passive. Online commerce is a competitive market in which businesses have to constantly come up with new ideas to make themselves more attractive to customers than their competitors. Some of the measures that B2B companies implement to
boost their online sales include new offers on products, more online sales channels, and increasing their marketing budget.
Online sales and user experience
The online share of business done by the B2B segment makes up around
two-thirds of their revenue, highlighting that is an important part of the business model. One of the most popular ways for B2B companies to sell online is through a marketplace.
Online marketplaces are the most popular type of multichannel e-commerce sites, and they are set up in such a way that numerous third parties list their products or services on the same site. The marketplace acts as a bridge between the business and customer, usually processing the transaction and then passing the order information along to the individual vendor who usually then ships the goods themselves. The most popular examples of this are Amazon and eBay. This method, although often very convenient, is not always without
problems. Customers can experience difficulties with delivery and tracking, the payment process, or even have trouble with returns. This is especially true for smaller businesses who cannot invest in as sophisticated digital infrastructure as other industry heavyweights.
Social commerce, the future?
When it comes to the future of B2B e-commerce, a relatively new avenue that companies have been using to sell their products is social media. Although over the past five years, companies have used social media to promote their products, through targeted advertising or partnerships with influencers, now an increasing number of social media platforms offer the opportunity to sell merchandise directly. Although typically it is thought that social commerce is more targeted towards the B2C market, because usually individual consumers scroll through social media, roughly 45 percent of companies in Germany said that they believed
social commerce would be very or rather important to their segment in the next five years. At the beginning of 2023, about 38 percent of wholesalers and manufacturers said that they were investing in social media. This is a crucial step, to ensure success because companies need to have a strong social media presence, otherwise, they will not be favored by the algorithm and unable to maximize their potential. The number of followers, number of shares and retweets, as well as the number of website visitors that have been redirected from social media are all indicators of how well a company is
performing on various online platforms.
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