A01 chaf6542 06 se fm indd

Business demand for digital business services

The B2B market is more complex than B2C in that variation in demand will occur according 

to different types of organisation and people within the buying unit in the organisation. This 

analysis is also important as part of the segmentation of different groups within a B2B target 

market. We need to profile business demand according to:

Figure 4.5

Development of experience in Internet usage

Amount of activity

Time

Fast: simple search

or decisions

Medium: research

for complex

decisions

Slow: technically

complex or

financially risky

Email

Search

engines

Surfing

Research

offline

purchases

e.g. travel, car

Make small

low-involvement

purchase

Post to

a forum

Buy at auction

More frequent

higher-value

purchases

Sell at auction

Download

software

Visit

government

sites

Favoured

information

source

Frequent

high-

involvement

purchases

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Chapter 4  E‑environment

1 

Variation in organisation characteristics

● 

Size of company (employees or turnover)

● 

Industry sector and products

● 

Organisation  type  (private,  public,  government,   not-  for-  profit)

● 

Division

● 

Country and region.

2 

Individual role

● 

Role and responsibility from job title, function or number of staff managed

● 

Role in buying decision (purchasing influence)

● 

Department

● 

Product interest

● 

Demographics: age, sex and possibly social group.

B2B profiles

We can profile business users of the Internet in a similar way to consumers by assessing: