In-depth: B2B e-Commerce 2019

This report gives insights into the B2B eCommerce market, its size and major regions, trends, and key players. B2B eCommerce refers to exchange of goods and services between companies through an electronic platform. Companies operating in the B2B eCommerce space follow either the direct model or the marketplace model to conduct their business. The direct model involves companies setting up their own platforms and selling directly to the buyers. A marketplace on the other hand is a platform where many companies sell their products alongside their competitors. Even though B2C eCommerce has witnessed widespread adoption, it is the recent evolution and growth of B2B eCommerce, that is grabbing the attention of buyers, sellers and investors all over the world.

One of trends in B2B eCommerce is the rise of vertical or specialized marketplaces. These portals offer a deeper range of products in a particular category along with specialized value added services. Companies are also increasingly using big data to deliver a personalized customer experience. Another trend is the rising popularity of mobile shops also in B2B eCommerce. Due to the strain on legacy platforms, which aren’t designed to handle such scale cloud platforms are picking up. Additionally, B2B eCommerce companies are now integrating their systems and platforms to establish an omnichannel relationship with their customers.

Paucity of quality customer-data due to smaller number of buyers and hyper specialized services, is hampering personalization efforts. Further, the larger scale and other complexities of the sector such as larger order quantities, variable prices, more products and tighter delivery deadlines are putting a strain on existing supply chains. Another barrier to industry growth is that companies often simply extend their ERP solutions to enable e-business, thus putting a big strain on the legacy platforms. With B2B companies now required to be nimble and mimic the B2C shopping experience, a flexible and interoperable eCommerce architecture is of primary importance.

Amazon, Alibaba, Rakuten, Mercateo, Global Sources, Walmart and IndiaMART are the major players in the global B2B eCommerce market. Amazon rebranded its B2B eCommerce operations from AmazonSupply to Amazon Business in 2015 and achieved sales of over US$1 billion in just a year. Alibaba with a share of about 30% in China is now expanding its operational base to India, Europe and the U.S. The company’s vast network of low cost suppliers enables it to dominate the market, followed by Global Sources. IndiaMart, Mercateo, Rakuten and Amazon are the largest B2B eCommerce companies in India, Germany, Japan and the U.S. respectively.