Channel or B2B Promotions
Almost every time when people talk about business-to-business commerce, the first thing
comes to my mind is Alibaba, since this is where I learned the term–B2B. But another
interesting thing I’ve noticed recently is that in digital age, B2B has become more like a
platform rather than a business model.
Take Alibaba as an example, as a B2B international group and sourcing destinations of
many small business owners, it has officially transformed into online trade platform to
serve more needs. Alibaba has been actively promoting cross-border shopping, which also
provide foreign merchant more opportunities to enter Chinese market. During last year,
Alibaba opened up to foreign suppliers with the addition of twenty-four South Korean
brands through its “Direct From Overseas Markets” program. In this way, foreign brand
could reduce costs and face up with the vast number of sell/consumers directly. For those
small business merchants, it would be difficult for them to establish a fine cooperation and
mutual-trust relation with foreign suppliers in a long distance. But through Alibaba, they
could get better source to develop their own business within limited principal. Alibaba’s
platform allows for resource maximization, and makes the small businesses do more with
less.
Also, I noticed that in today’s marketplaces, B2B is used in the context of communication
and collaboration. And this is a point when content marketing comes into play, and serve
as an active role in the B2B relationships. It may not a classic case, but I think TED Talks