Question

Often corporate entities sell products to both business and consumer markets. Compare and contrast the marketing strategies that Air Canada OR Smucker’s Jam will use when selling their products to each type of market.

Please provide references, thank you!

Answer 1

Step 1

Let us understand on based on which factors/dimensions they are different

Business to Business or B-To-B and consumer buyer traits can be compared on several dimensions, the market demographic profile and buyer-seller relationships.

Demand Traits - Consumer buy for their own use and consumption, the demand for B-To-B goods and services is derived from consumer demand. B-To-B tends to be relatively price inelastic, so that an increase or decrease in the price of one or two commodities of the many that might constitute a computer for example will not have a great effect on aggregate price. Changes in consumer demand can lead to uneven developments in industrial market, a small increase in consumer demand can have a major effect.

Market demographic traits- Consumer purchasers are more in number than the B-To-B buyers. B-To-B buyers are large in numbers and are have more geogrphically concentration. Like use of computer in Silicon Valley for software companies. B-to B or organizations can form purchasing policies and guidelines that may be summarized in a manual.

Step 2

Compare and contrast between Business-To-Business and consumer buyer marketing strategy

B2B(Business to business) gives importance on logical process driven purchasing decisions while B2C(Business to consumers) give stress on emotion-driven purchasing decision.

Customer relationships building - B2B give stress on building personal relationships that drive long term business. So, relationship building in B2B marketing during the buying cycle is important. That gives the scope to prove what kind of business methods, ethics and morals one initiates. This calls for connecting targeted audience that deals with separation of business or clients business from other competition as well as promotes branding.

B2B Business always gives importance to generating leads. That initiates repeat and referral bonus, promoting these personal relationship can make a business with strong foothold.

B2C: Implementing transactional relationship

The primary target of B2C market is to push consumers to products on the client's that the company has or to the company's website and drive sales and marketing decisions from there. Time is money, so B2C companies promotes efficiency, minimize the time spent to know the customer that in turn causes the relationship to be transactional.

The marketing strategy mainly stresses on selling the product at the quickest rates possible. Reviews sometimes can be found bad in B2B settings but here in B2C a lot of negative review are buried by positive reviews. Here for B2C a marketing strategy can be, promoting PR outreach and giving deals for completed reviews for generating more positive google reviews.

A nice strategy that is useful for B2C can be store credit or personalized discout through email marketing for collecting review.

After a customer makes buys or gets a product, they can receive an email or a pop-up message asking about their experience. Giving extra value to custoer can increase user base, improve user experience, and nurture branding.

Branding- Branding is part and parcel of B2B, it can be obtained sometimes via relationship building. Branding happens woth onset of deliverance of the product and with perfect presented commodity or service. Researching the market can help B2B to know where it position itself and promote branding and lead generation.

B2B refines brand towards target customers and thereby help drive lead generation.

B2C gives importance tobranding too. It plays the key role since it allows the sales person to deliver custom messages, promote loyalty with customer, redefine credibility, and emotionally connect with the customer to motivate buyer to buy.

Since, there is minimal interaction between customer and company the sales person should create nice , quality uer experience for the customer for maximum customer retention.

Process of decison making-

For B2B it is more of a open communication between two business for finding out whether or not it will fit the requirement of the other company.

Throughout this the marketer tries to compare different positive points of the company to its competitor's so that it remains ahead. During crucial time of decision making process B2B customer or the company buying the product from the other company evaluates on its various demands and needs, these needs can be rational or emotionally motivated.

Understanding the audience for B2B marketers is important.

B2C calls for simplicity- Creating influential advertisements can create a need for a product to customer. When the consumer identifies the need for th commodity , they know what they want, and is likely to purachase the product. In other words in B2B consumers are not rigid when looking for a product. For example in B2B setting a business is looking to install CRM there are tons of CRM's in the market like zuora, salesforce, they can make choices based on several products.