Week four EOC: Consumer vs. buisness to buisness marketing

There is a huge difference between Consumer marketing rather that business marketing.  With consumer marketing, the company that is selling deals with a wide range of people, which is us, the consumer. 

"Consumers make many buying decisions every day, and the buying decision is the focal point of the marketer’s effort. Most large companies research consumer buying decisions in great detail to answer questions about what consumers buy, where they buy, how and how much they buy, when they buy, and why they buy. Marketers can study actual consumer purchases to find out what they buy, where, and how much. But learning about the whys of consumer buying behavior is not so easy—the answers are often locked deep within the consumer’s mind (Kotler, 137).

In business marketing, business marketers deal with employees of a company, such as an IT technician or an office manager.  Many of the transactions that business marketers have with other companies can vary between computers, office furniture, or even tires.

"The business market is huge. In fact, business markets involve far more dollars and items than do consumer markets. For example, think about the large number of business transactions involved in the production and sale of a single set of Goodyear tires. Various suppliers sell Goodyear the rubber, steel, equipment, and other goods that it needs to produce tires. Goodyear then sells the finished tires to retailers, who in turn sell them to consumers. Thus, many sets of business purchases were made for only one set of consumer purchases. In addition, Goodyear sells tires as original equipment to manufacturers who install them on new vehicles, and as replacement tires to companies that maintain their own fleets of company cars, trucks, buses, or other vehicles" (Kotler, 157).

Many companies use different advertising tactics when dealing with both consumers and business.  As a photography supervisor in the Air Force, I purchased a lot of my offices photo equipment.  I was given an annual budget and we had specific companies that we did business with.  We would get a lot of correspondence from other companies either through email or they would mail us their catalogs to try and earn our business.  As a consumer, we mainly see advertising for products either on television or the internet, Facebook has become huge for companies to advertise their businesses.

"Marketers are working to harness the power of these new social networks to promote their products and build closer customer relationships. Instead of throwing more one-way commercial messages at ad-weary consumers, they hope to use social networks to interact with consumers and become a part of their conversations and lives" (Kotler 142-143).

Whether marketing to consumers or businesses, advertising and marketing are in the business to make the customer happy, keep the customer coming back, and of course to make money.