In order to evaluate the differences between a B2C site and a B2B site it is required to know what B2C and B2B represent. B2C is a consumer that shops on the Web and a B2B is a transaction conducted between businesses on the Web (Schneider, 2004). Reviewing ethical, legal and regulatory will provide a better understanding of what the requirements are for a B2B and B2C site. According to dictionary.com, ethical is being in accordance with the accepted principles of right and wrong that govern the conduct of a profession. Legal is defined as in conformity with or permitted by law and regulatory is identified, to control or direct according to rule, principle, or law (dictionary.com).
When providing services either on a B2C site or B2B site there is ethical responsibilities, laws and regulations that each organization/company must follow in order to stay in compliance. There is increasing acceptance that consumer trust is a key foundation for electronic commerce success. If the consumer cannot develop some sense of confidence in the vendor's competence, predictability, benevolence and integrity, then the consumer is likely to abort the purchase and simply look elsewhere for a more trustworthy alternative (McKnight, Chervany, 2002).
When an organization determines that e-commerce is an option that is going to be offered to consumers, the organization needs to realize that as a whole the organization is going to be exposed to new risks, such as, fraud and viruses. Regulatory mechanisms for e-business are not yet in place in many countries. This causes B2B and B2C sites to be based around trust, trust in the organization that has been chosen, either for business or consumer purposes (Chaker, 2005).
Many B2C Web sites are segmented along ethnic lines (Latino.com, Sino.com etc), horizontally along age groups (kids.com, parents.com), horizontally along incomes (Autotrade.com, eTrade, eBay), and care out a niche (WebMD.com, wine.com). This kind of disequilibrium stems from rapid changes in technology and may causes a paradigm shift (Chaker, 2005). However, all organizations need to still be conscience of the ethical, legal, and regulatory issues that may arise because of these shifts.
Web-based organizations are realizing that it is imperative that ethical, legal, and regulatory issues are important to consider when policy decisions are being considered. Ethical examples could be when Amazon.com's reputation was put on the line by The New York Times. The New York Times ran the story that disclosed Amazon.com's arrangements with publishers for book promotions.
The growth of online business has grown enormously over the years. Cliptomania is a family operated and owned small e-business that primarily sells clip on earrings (Brown, DeHayes, Hoffer, Martin, & Perkins, 2012, p. 308). Cliptomania early developments were very modest, and as such the company experienced copious strategic dilemmas. An initial strategic dilemma that the company encountered when establishing and building their new e-business undertaking was to create a website for the business operations and essentially to have it fully operable. The owners, Jim and Candy elected to hire a vendor to host the website and additionally utilize the IT systems resources of the vendor to sustain their business. At the very beginning they exploited the offerings of the Yahoo Store. However, continuing down this avenue of using the services of the Yahoo Store inevitably became too costly. By using the services and business offerings of a vendor made it convenient and effortless for Jim and Candy to start their e-business store. Unfortunately the couple did not have much in the way of professional help, and so they had to create and put together the website by themselves. Additionally they also had to deal with establishing their online credibility as many customers preferred to call in their orders just to talk with a real person before being comfortable enough to place their orders via the webpage.
This is because for example, if you buy a designer watch on an e-commerce site, you don’t know 100% if it’s original or not, which is why some customers don’t trust e-commerce sites. Also some customers have trust issues with e-commerce businesses because they think their personal details are not private. Customers also have issues when e-commerce sites personalise their usage of sites, by recommended other products, centred on what they purchased or searched for before.
both B2B and B2C is that it gives to both business models a more effective control over theri customer
Mallor, J. P., Barnes, A., Bowers, T., & Langvardt, A. W. (2010). Business Law: The Ethical, Global, and E-Commerce Environment (14th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
E-commerce Law Report. 4(4), pp23-24.
Chesseman, Henry R. Legal Environment of Business: Online Commerce, Business Ethics, and Global Issues. 8th ed. N.p.: Pearson Education, Inc. , 2016. Print.
In contrast, B2C companies are product driven. These products have to be highly in demand to the consumer market, and in order to be successful these companies have to sell the product or service in high volumes to make a profit. Therefore, the relationship between the company and the consumer is not nearly as maintained as that of a B2B company. The value of this marketing strategy is the transaction- as many as possible to cover the costs and make a profit. In a similar fashion, however, there is also the value of trust, as a consumer that trusts the company or the brand will often assist the company in increasing transactions (Murphy, 2008).
The following table summarizes the differences between B2B marketing and B2C marketing. Your marketing plan needs to take into account the differences and ensure you are developing the right types of activities for your particular market.
In a continuance of the differences between B2B vs. B2C web sites, this week's paper will cover how the sites manage ethical, legal and regulatory issues.
In today's competing world, many organizations are rethinking their strategies in terms of the online business and its capabilities and culture. Organizations are taking advantage of the widespread web to buy and sell goods from other companies and recently from individual customers. Exploiting these opportunities of convenience, availability and widespread reach of the web or Internet, many companies such as Amazon have benefited from the use of web successfully.
About 98.3% of all persons had used e-business services such as Octopus Card and Automatic Teller Machine (Census and Statistics Department, 2009). One of the pitfalls for the development of e-business, however, is the concerns on consumer privacy. According to Green’s (1999) survey, 54% of respondents had decided not to purchase a product because of a concern overuse of personal information collected in the e-business transaction. This essay examines the circumstances on protection of consumer privacy in e-business. As e-business is surging by an astronomical number and consumer information is a kind of property, the protection of consumer privacy in e-business becomes significant.
E-business and e-commerce are terms that are sometimes used interchangeably, and sometimes they are used to differentiate one vendor’s product from another. In both cases, the e stands for "electronic networks" and describes the application of electronic network technology - including Internet and electronic data interchange (EDI) - to improve and change business processes (Bartels, 2000)
The are two basic categories of business conducted over the internet, Business-to-Customer (B2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B), and they share one common key aspect - use of Internet technologies to manage all aspects of the business.
growth in usage by both consumers and businesses. The unique capabilities of the Internet has captured the attention of the marketing community. While a growing number of companies have or are interested in developing an Internet presence, there is still a great deal of uncertainty about it and the potential ethical issues associated with its use as a marketing medium. Although many businesses are acknowledging the importance of a Web site, but the potential ethical issues related to marketing on the Internet still having an uncertainty in this situation. Much less attention has been given to the business community's perceptions of the ethicalness of this new medium. The unique interactivity of the Internet has captured the marketing community's interest as a way to develop and enhance customer relationships and establish greater brand identity. Thus, many commercial services have become available on the Internet that allow consumers and organizations to interact electronically. These services include booking airline tickets online, buying books and compact discs, and receiving stock market information. Although the number of consumer users and commercial organizations navigating on this "information superhighway" is growing almost exponentially, the benefits of the Internet are not without drawbacks.