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Business or consumer models of e‑commerce transactions

It is now commonplace to describe e-commerce transactions between an organisation and 

its stakeholders according to whether they are primarily with consumers (

business‑to‑ 

consumer – B2C

) or other businesses (

business‑to‑business – B2B

).

Customer journey

A description of modern 

multichannel buyer 

behaviour as consumers 

use different media to 

select suppliers, make 

purchases and gain 

customer support.

Web 2.0 concept

A collection of web 

services that facilitate 

interaction of web users 

with sites to create  user‑ 

 generated content and 

encourage behaviours 

such as community 

or social network 

participation, 

mashups, 

content rating, use of 

widgets and tagging.

 Customer‑  centric 

marketing

An approach to marketing 

based on detailed 

knowledge of customer 

behaviour within the 

target audience which 

seeks to fulfil the 

individual needs and 

wants of customers.

Customer insight

Knowledge about 

customers’ needs, 

characteristics, 

preferences and 

behaviours based on 

analysis of qualitative 

and quantitative data. 

Specific insights can be 

used to inform marketing 

tactics directed at groups 

of customers with shared 

characteristics.

Microformats

A simple set of formats 

based on XHTML 

for describing and 

exchanging information 

about objects including 

product and travel 

reviews, recipes and 

event information.

Mashups

Websites, pages or 

widgets that combine the 

content or functionality 

of one website or data 

source with another to 

create something offering 

a different type of value 

to web users from the 

separate types of content 

or functionality.

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Chapter 1 Introduction to digital business and e‑commerce

Figure 1.11 gives examples of different companies operating in the business-to-con-

sumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) spheres. Often companies such as BP or Dell 

Computer will have products that appeal to both consumers and businesses, so will have dif-

ferent parts of their site to appeal to these audiences.

Referring to the  well-  known online companies in Table 1.1 initially suggests that these com-

panies are mainly focussed on B2C markets. However, B2B communications are still important 

for many of these companies since business transactions can drive revenue, as for example eBay 

Business (http://business.ebay.com/), or the B2C service may need to be sustained through 

advertising provided through B2B transactions; for example, Google’s revenue is largely based 

on its B2B AdWords (http://adwords.google.com/) and advertising service, and  advertising- 

 based revenue is also important to sites such as YouTube, MySpace and Facebook.

Figure 1.11 also presents two additional types of transaction, those where consumers transact 

directly with other consumers (