How to Conduct B2B Market Research

What is B2B Market Research and Analysis

B2B stands for business-to-business, is a process of selling products or services to other businesses. Competitive analysis is extremely important to B2B research as it helps highlight where you’re having success and your weaknesses against your competitors.

Why do you need it

For a better knowledge about business interactions, you need to know about the company you are involving with. Also, there can be a lot of data involvement which can be chaotic to handle. To have hands on, on the massive data for better productivity results we need to have business to business analysis.

B2B analysis gives you a direct contact with buyers and sellers, this can include the traders, industrialists, middlemen, drop shippers and wholesalers from across the world. It gives you ideal opportunity to expand your business network. You can identify the influential companies and can get directly in touch with them to create mutually benefiting partnerships. Small business owners can get more visibility in the market through B2B analysis. Helps you identify Sales Leads and not waste time chasing the wrong ones

Read about : Characteristics Of A Scalable Business

How is it different from B2C Research

The business-to-business market differs in key areas from business-to-consumer research and requires a unique approach in terms of market research.

Complexity of the purchase decision
As the value of many purchases is often very high, and there are many people involved, purchase decision often becomes very complex
Derived Demand
Demand in B2B markets is derived from demand in the consumer market. For example, a packaging material manufacturing company may manufacture packets and bags for a packaging distribution company. This is then sold to say, wholesalers. Wholesalers then sell it to e-commerce players and retail stores. Depending on where you are in the value chain and problems up and down the value chain, can affect the ability to meet customer demand.
Supplier Dependency
In the B2B market, if the supply of the product is interrupted, it is very difficult to switch suppliers. Even if you are able to do it quickly, there is risk involved alongside time and cost constraints.
Smaller Customer base
B2B players have a smaller customer base( hundreds and thousands). This provides opportunities in terms of relationship building and personal contacts. In many markets, these relationships are the key selling mechanisms.
High Value spend
Transactions in most cases are large in value. In most markets, the Pareto rule applies – that 80% of value will be driven by 20% of customers.
Technical Expertise
B2B Products themselves can be technical in nature which may be difficult for customers to understand, integrate or implement. So they always want technical documentation and support.
Marketing
Marketing campaigns are smaller and targetted. B2B markets can represent many challenges for the marketer.

Read about : user segmentation model