The Business Market Compared to the Consumer

There is a clear difference between the business market compared to the consumer market. A company will depend on the target client that can be business or consumer to determine how they build their brand. A brand is defined or consisted of name, sign, symbol, design or any combination of that to identify a kind of goods or services to provide to the target client. Because the target client is different, building a brand in a business to business (B2B) context is different from business to consumer (B2C).

In B2B branding, a company should make its marketing plan by focusing on connection with and by building strong relationship with business client. The goal is to make the brand of the company to be the best choice and the most suitable to do business with from the client. To reach that goal, making strong and personal relationships with the customer to become the go-to source is the main way that the brand is built.

In B2B branding, it requires that the business be willing to accept the time to completely educate the professional buyers about the brand instead of mass marketing and small advertisements. Kotler stated (2012) said that the business client are professional buyers are targeted because they are well informed about the needs and goals of the purchase, and focus on purchasing a product that can help them to achieve higher profit with a lower total cost. The price is not the main thing to the B2B buyers but the availability that fit their demand is more important in their interest. B2B branding goes into details because the target buyers decide to buy the products or service basing on fine points and their benefits.

In the other hand, the consumer market looks at a vast majority of people in B2C branding. While customers can develop a strong connection to a brand, little is spent for personnel information; relying instead on mass communications such as TV, radio, and magazine ads that are distributed. B2C branding is more "broad" and based on the emotional and other benefits of the consumer. The B2C brand presence is also covers more area and target audience than that of B2B. Consumers have tendency to make purchase on a whim or just indulging recklessly, they usually buy what they want when they want.

In short, business to business buyers tend to be more rational and B2B branding is more complex while consumers are more controversial and B2C branding is built on larger scope and on mass scale.