On the Internet, B2B (business-to-business), also known as e-biz, is the exchange of products, services, or information between businesses rather than between businesses and consumers. Although early interest centered on the growth of retailing on the Internet sometimes called e-tailing, forecasts are that B2B revenue will far exceed business-to-consumers (B2C) revenue in the near future. According to studies the money volume of B2B exceeds that of e-tailing by 10 to 1.

Over the next five years, B2B is expected to have a compound annual growth of 41%. B2B Web sites can be sorted into: Company Web sites, since the target audience for many company Web sites is other companies and their employees. Company sites can be thought of as round-the-clock mini-trade exhibits. Sometimes a company Web site serves as the entrance to an exclusive extranet available only to customers or registered site users. Some company Web sites sell directly from the site, effectively e-tailing to other businesses.

Product supply and procurement exchanges, where a company purchasing agent can shop for supplies from vendors, request proposals, and, in some cases, bid to make a purchase at a desired price. Sometimes referred to as e-procurement sites, some serve a range of industries and others focus on a niche market. Specialized or vertical industry portals which provide a sub Web of information, product listings, discussion groups, and other features. These vertical portal sites have a broader purpose than the procurement sites although they may also support buying and selling. The brokering sites that act as an intermediary between someone wanting a product or service and potential providers.

Equipment leasing is an example. Information sites sometimes known as info-mediary), which provide information about a particular industry for its companies and their employees. These include specialized search sites and trade and industry standards organization sites. Many B2B sites may seem to fall into more than one of these groups. Models for B2B sites are still evolving. Another type of B2B enterprise is software for building B2B Web sites, including site building tools and templates, database, and methodologies as well as transaction software. B2B is e-commerce between businesses.

An earlier and much more limited kind of online B2B prior to the Internet was Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), which is still widely used. Determining the needs of those interacting with your client online requires you to know something about the macro and micro environmental factors that shape their needs. The macro factors are the kinds of things that you can learn about through a review of the secondary research. They include indicators such as the following: Demographic factors: World population growth, population age mix, ethnic markets, educational groups, household patterns, and so on. Economic factors: Income distribution, debt, credit availability, and so on. Technological factors: Pace of technology, opportunity for innovation, increased regulation for technological change. Political and legal environment:

Legislation affecting businesses, protection from unfair competition, consumer protection and privacy issues, and so on. Social factors: Audience views of themselves, views of others, views of society, and so on. The micro environmental factors that shape your audience's needs are closely related to a person's general lifestyle and are gathered by using primary, firsthand research tools like online surveys of site visitors. These factors include the following: Cultural factors: Culture, subcultures, social class, and so on. Social factors: Reference groups, family, roles, status, and so on. Personal factors: Stage of the life cycle, occupation, economic circumstances, lifestyle, personality, and so on. Psychological factors: Motivation, perceptions, learning, beliefs, attitudes.

The relative importance of these various factors to your online communications strategy is going to vary based on the type of audience you're addressing. If you're developing a plan for a business-to-business company seeking to sell its widgets to manufacturers, it's probably less important to know about the lifestyles and personalities of your online visitors and more important to know about economic factors such as credit availability. On the other hand, someone crafting an online communications strategy for a consumer-oriented company, like a cosmetics retailer, would be very interested in knowing about the cultural factors affecting its online users. Such a company might want to know about the age, race, ethnicity, economic circumstances, and perceptions of its online visitors. We'll talk more in Chapter 5 about tools that can be used to gather this information, but our purpose here is to point out the types of information that you need to know to be a better online communicator.