The Big Bad World Of Business.......

A great man called Frank Sinatra once sang a famous line "And now, the end is near

And so I face the final curtain."

Unfortunately for me and for you this is it the final posting,the end, the long goodbye (OK enough milking it now) even if this is the last one ever, there is something to be learnt it was never going to be me just rambling on and on about a subject i don't really know about or is it......? i don't know you tell me.

This week is all about business to business.... This is ever so complex well i think it is anyway, so if i lose you at any point i apologise, but if you got an issue you can take it up with my lecturer Ruth.... 

Are you ready for a bit of a shock...? Yes? Well here is an interesting fact for you the The volume of Business to Business (B2B) transactions is much higher than the volume of Business to Consumer (B2C) transactions.

Here is what every body's favourite search site has to say on the matter of B2B and that would be Wikidpedia "Business-to-business (B2B) describes commerce transactions between businesses, such as between a manufacturer and a wholesaler, or between a wholesaler and a retailer."

Today's lecture was about the above clearly Business to Business, we were asked to work in groups and as it was Easter the class was (RAMMED) hope you can feel the sarcasm in that? There was all of about 8 people who decided to come so thanks to them for coming. I had to work with Lois and Sally and that was interesting as they tried to prove that i was wrong about everything.....so anyway back to the lecture we were set a task to look at three different organisations. Those companies were Coca Cola, A Financial Services software House and an MRI Scanner Manufacturer, on the right hand side of the blog is the first page of what we had to complete to give a rough idea of exactly what we had to do its entitled "Business 2 Business"

As we progressed through the sheets it slowly became clear that business buying decisions are consumer buying decisions just on massive scale not only involving one person but quite possibly 20 plus in some cases,for example a question was "How many people get involved in the decision to buy?" the answers are as follows;

• Coca Cola - ONE
• Financial Services - Accounts Department & Purchasing (4 - 6)
• MRI Scanner - Board of Directors & Community (100's - 1000's)

When reading on through the task there was a question about FTPEPS if you would like to know about the subject of (FTPEPS) then (click here)

You may or may not be interested to know that Coke uses none of them,the financial services use 4 of them and the MRI scanner uses all of them. Here is the FTPEPS list for the MRI scanner :

•F - £825,000 of restricted budgets

•T – possibly years

•P – if it malfunctions it could kill by misdiagnosis

•E – high risk for post holder

•P – it could kill

•S – think of PR publics – local community may have helped to raise funds – many interested publics

One thing to remember through this and that is The Businesses are the customer not the people, for example consider the companies which purchase some software they could range from Banks, Mortgage lenders, Loan companies and Building societies, it is not just one person that makes that decision for that specific piece of software it involves loads of people from the finance department to the purchasing department NOT JUST A SINGLE PERSON, can you work out the purchasing chain......? But in the case of an MRI scanner the idea of purchasing is not that difficult and it becomes "a case of needing it not wanting it"Michael Fontanoz 2009 where as a can of coke is wanting!

The relationships between the suppliers are at completely different ends of the spectrum by this i mean if you take the suppliers of Coke they will not know you they do not come to where you work,study or play to see if everything is OK with your can or bottle of coke, where as the relationship between the manufacturer of an MRI scanner and the organisations they have supplied will be on name terms and will have to build a relationship why is this i can hear you ask.... well here are a few points that can be taken into consideration; 

•Because there are fewer clients you cannot afford to lose any

•Because there is a lot of money and risk at stake you need to be able to build TRUST

on the right is an image showing Kotlers marketing mix but notice how the boxes have the same information

 but in a completely different order.

The main method of a business marketing to another is through personal selling, often taking the form of a sales person pitching the relevant information to the other business. This method is used less in consumer marketing as it would mean only reaching a limited amount of people when, in comparison, advertising could reach a much wider audience.

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