B2C Compared to B2B - Essay Example

(2006c) By combining both the aspects, Internet and supply chain, we can define B2B as those "portals that allow businesses to deal directly with their suppliers and distributors online, thereby allowing electronic transfer of orders, invoices, payments etc. Wholesalers, distributors, and manufacturers fall in this category". (2006a) B2B websites serves as primary or direct link, which connect suppliers to suppliers or business-to-business while "B2C websites are intermediary portals that link customers to suppliers as its main concern is selling to the end user". (2006a) "From a 'solution-oriented' perspective, a B2C site is just the end point of B2B and B2C supply chain". (2006c) "Research suggests that that both the e-commerce and advertising expenditure numbers for B2B will grow faster than B2C in the coming years.

Given the consensus about the importance of B2B e-commerce and advertising, it is surprising that B2C websites have received much more than their fair share of research attention in the Journal of Advertising Research as well as in other journals". (Chakraborty et al, 2003, p. 50) "Distributors have not lagged behind in fulfilling the need of bridging the gap between manufacturer and end consumer". (2006b) "This would be less of a concern if the advertising objectives and the sales processes were similar between B2B and B2C domains.

But, many differences exist between these two domains." (Chakraborty et al, 2003, p. . Security issues are centered on transmission and storage of transactional information by a website. As in the case of privacy, consumers experience a lack of control over the payment information provided to a website. Security issues are shared by the websites and consumers. This has led many websites to resolve the technical issues related to security. In spite of these measures, visitors may still perceive the website to be unsafe.

Reduction in perceptions of security concerns affects web usage. (Chakraborty et al, 2003, p. 50) B2C websites includes on-line trading, biddings, auctions, stock trading markets etc. Ebay and Amozon.com are one of the most successful B2C integration these days. If we look at the causes of building e-business integrations, it would be noticed that "a primary reason for building such initiatives internally is that value chains are only as strong as their weakest link, devoting extensive time, resources, and capital to B2B projects seldom yield substantial return on investment if internal systems are not integrated.

Simply connecting applications on a point-to-point basis is not enough. Without a thoroughly integrated internal infrastructure, B2B initiatives are sure to provide little value in the best-case scenario, or no value in the worst. To fully achieve the kind of business process visibility required to gain true insight into the enterprise and supply chain, companies must rise out of the fiefdoms of information and departmental approaches to conducting business. They need the ability to define enterprise business processes that can span across multiple systems and business partners that reside beyond the firewall.

These processes are