B2B ecommerce

B2B ecommerce covers everything from a manufacturer selling parts to a distributor, to a wholesaler taking orders from independent retailers, to a distributor selling directly to a contractor or business buyer online. Master B2B’s annual State of B2B eCommerce research tracks the category’s growth and the specific ways it differs operationally from B2C: contract and tiered pricing, purchase orders and net payment terms, larger and more complex catalogs, and buying decisions often made by a committee rather than a single individual. The category has also been growing less uniform over time, as B2B and B2C business models converge, consumer brands add wholesale arms and B2B companies adopt consumer-grade digital experiences, which makes B2B ecommerce less a fixed set of practices and more a moving target shaped by whichever side is currently borrowing the best ideas from the other.