Your Viewpoint: Business-to-Business (B2B) E-Commerce

E-Commerce Marketing
Author’s Name
Institutional
E-Commerce Marketing
The growth of electronic commerce (e-commerce) is increasing fast among business organizations all over the world. The adoption of the technology in organizations has had profound effects on the strategies of the businesses (Schneider, 2015). It has re-written and redefined the rules of competition as the technology continues to be revolutionize how businesses are conducted. E-commerce is now a significant part of commerce as its projects are intertwined with all firm’s strategic plans. The most evident strategic effects of e-commerce at unit level of businesses are value-addition, cost leadership, business growth strategies, and differentiation; these can be understood by analyzing how they affect the various forms of e-commerce (Moore & Pareek, 2009).
E-commerce is the electronic exchange of information, goods, services, and payments and includes the creation and maintenance of web-based relations (Distante et al., 2014). It encompasses a scope of various technologies that include the internet, extranets, intranets, and electronic data exchange (EDI). However, three major forms of e-commerce include business-to-business, business-to-consumer, and intra-business.
Business-to-business (B2B) E-Commerce
Business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce supports inter-organizational systems (IOC) (Schneider, 2015). These are networked computers enabling companies to share information and to process information across its boundaries.
Added Value - Types of business-to-business e-commerce applications include electronic funds transfer, data interchange, integrated messaging, electronic forms, and shared database. Business-to-business processes enable increased information access and sharing of data through corporate extranets. The power of e-commerce comes from a seller and buyer being capable of conducting a business relationship online in totality. This froms the first impression, enabling competitive comparison, negotiation to a closure of a sale and product delivery, and finally the customer service.
Differentiation - E-commerce differentiates products and services via integrated business services. Prosperous high-tech companies connect their internal development and research to their suppliers for concurrent engineering in R&D labs. They also have their product labelled e-commerce.
Cost Leadership -Strong B2B alliances can be created in the process that complements a cost leadership strategy.
Focus - E-commerce radically changes the power-balance in supplier-buyer relationships, shifts the competitive situation of the industry participants, and elevates entry and exit barriers. Barriers include regulatory, technological, economic, and social; getting around these earlier gives businesses an edge over their competitors.
Business-to-consumer (B2C) E-Commerce
Business-to-consumer e-commerce represents the consumer electronic marketplaces (Distante et al., 2014). Added Value- In most cases, it is the website where the customers to a particular company can visit and engage the company or make purchases electronically. It is difficult to sell products without differentiating. For example,  HYPERLINK ""  provides servic...