Week 4 EOC Business to Business VS Consumer Marketing

Business to Business marketing is the practice of individuals or organizations including commercial, government and institutions to resell or use their product.  Consumer marketing is all the individuals that buy and acquire goods and services for personal consumption (Marketing: An Introduction for Education Management, Armstrong and Kotler).

GE is a very familiar brand to most of us and you probably have one of their consumer products in your home as we speak, but most consumers would be surprised to find out that GE’s consumer products that range from refrigerators, microwaves, coffee makers and hundreds of other products bearing their name, contributes to less than one-third of the company’s total $183 billion in annual sales. Most of GE’s business comes not from final consumers but from commercial and industrial consumers across a wide range of industries. Beyond light bulbs and electronics, GE sells everything from medical imaging technologies, security solutions, aircraft engines, and diesel locomotives (Pg. 39, Marketing: An Introduction for Education Management, Armstrong and Kotler).

To GE marketing to the general consumer who purchases home goods compared to a big business consumer purchasing a locomotive with a price tag of $2.2 million is quite a bit different. Losing the sale of a washer and dryer is disappointing but compared to losing the sale of the big business consumer could mean the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Another big difference between B2B marketing compared to consumer marketing is the decision making process. A regular consumer may go online and do a little research on what refrigerator to buy and compare prices. Where the big business consumer buying jet engines may have hundreds of decision makers involved in the process at all different levels.

GE works hard to build their relationships with consumers. They feel the real challenge is to win buyer’s business by building day-in, day-out, year-in, year-out partnerships with them, based on superior products and close collaborations(Marketing: An Introduction for Education Management, Armstrong and Kotler). That’s probably why they have stuck around so long and their cash follow has remained strong through these tough economic times.