Buyer Decision Process and Online Shopping in B2B Market

Cisco Target Market

Discuss All Stages Of The Buyer Decision Process For This Organization Using The Example Of a Target Consumer.

Discuss How Online Shopping Has Changed In The Business-To-Business Market Using An Example.

Cisco is an American multinational company headquartered in California. The company operates in both the segments that are B2C and B2B. The target market for B2B segment is large organizations, government, and commercial institution (Capon, 2016). The buying process of B2B target market of Cisco is given below;

The Buying Decision Process That The Company Can Consider And Used By Customers Of Cisco Includes Following Steps That Are:

Problem Recognition:  At this stage the customer tries to satisfy its needs by identifying the products or services that are available in the market. Cisco customers try to identify various software and technology that they think are suitable for their business.   This stage helps large organizations or government or commercial institution to identify their needs (Pawlowski & Pastuszak,2017).

Information research:  Consumers focus on collecting information from various sources such as from friends, family. Dealers, online sites and mass media.

Evaluation of different Alternatives: After collecting information, next step is to evaluate different alternatives available. Cisco customers are big market players so they try many alternatives or big five in order to select the best option. Mainly cisco customers evaluate different alternatives on the basis of some attributes that customer is looking for or that can help to solve their problem (Woodside,2016).

Purchase Decision: This is important stage where customer decides which alternative is better. Cisco target market is business class people their decisions affect or influenced by many situational factors.  

Post purchase evaluation: The final stage includes post purchase behaviour of customers. As after purchase consumer identify whether their problem that is recognised in stage one is solved or not.

Consumer shopping habits have changed over the last few years because of online shopping. Where shopping earlier was an in store activity, online shopping changed the customer perception and way they buy product. The companies can use online shopping sites for buying products. Nowadays, business to business market opts for online modes to sell their products so that transaction can take place speedily (Shahzad,Jamil, Gul & Javed,2019). IBM and General Electric also operate in business to business marketing that offer different software to their clients, and these companies sell their products through online platform.

For instance, IBM offers range of services to companies such as cloud computing for enterprises. These cloud computing software are sold by IBM also through online platform such as by registration of users on website so that customers can download trial and can make purchase decision by analysing the benefits that product offers.  As 46.6% of companies in business to business market shift to online channels for purchasing and store purchases become old things (Shahzad,Jamil, Gul & Javed,2019). Due to that in near future e commerce will take the lead. Hence, online shopping or platforms changed the way consumer buy products and this also impact on business to business market.

References

Capon, N., & Go, F. (2016). Frameworks for Market Strategy: European Edition. Routledge.

PawÅ‚owski, M., & Pastuszak, Z. (2017). B2B customers buying behavior. International Journal of Synergy and Research, 5, 19.

Shahzad, M. A., Jamil, K., Gul, R. F., & Javed, H. (2019). Effects of Online Shopping Trends on Consumer-Buying Behavior. International Journal of Research, 6(3), 271-282.

Woodside, A. G. (2016). Constructing Thick Descriptions of Marketers’ and Buyers’ Decision Processes in Business-to-Business Exchange Relationships', Case Study Research.