header-mobile-bg

Recommended Read #6: B2B eCommerce

As modern consumers, we have long been used to living in a world where online purchases are part of our everyday life. We order everything online – from books and toiletries – to gifts and groceries. As Amazon gobbles up companies like Whole Foods, even traditional brick and mortar stores are experiencing a fundamental sea change that promes to merge physical and digital shopping into a single experience.

As modern consumers, we have long been used to living in a world where online purchases are part of our everyday life. We order everything online – from books and toiletries – to gifts and groceries. As Amazon gobbles up companies like Whole Foods, even traditional brick and mortar stores are experiencing a fundamental sea change that promes to merge physical and digital shopping into a single experience.

Despite all of this, however, many people assume that business purchases are still being conducted as though we lived in the 1950s. Joe from “Company A” calls up Joan from “Company B” to adjust his industrial widget order for the next quarter and everything gets typed up in triplicate on carbon paper.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. B2B commerce is digitizing at a breakneck pace as Millennials take on more prominent purchasing roles and consumerization of the business world accelerates.

And it’s going to continue to happen because there is a lot of money to be made. A recent report by Statistica estimated that retail eCommerce sales will hit $4.5 trillion by 2021. That’s great. But the same report predicted that B2B eCommerce had already exceeded $7.7 trillion in online sales. A separate report from Forrester predicted that B2B eCommerce sales in the U.S. alone will reach $1.2 trillion by 2021.

Despite the explosion of online shopping, B2B eCommerce still lags behind B2C commerce with respect to technological innovation. This shows that there is still quite a bit of room for the industry to grow.

The following articles shed some light on the ways in which a rapidly maturing B2B eCommerce market will evolve in the coming years as it incorporates more influences from B2C – including the adoption of greater personalization and more content-lead shopping experiences:

Forbes kicked things off earlier this year with an article on B2B E-Commerce Trends To Take Notice Of In 2018 by Jary Carter, Cofounder and CRO of Oro Inc.

In a recent post for the CustomerThink blog, Jimmy Duvall of Big Commerce walks us through  3 Steps that B2B Players Can Learn from B2C Merchants.

Over on the Manufacturer.net blog, Mark Bartlett of FPX looks at the impact that B2B eCommerce is likely to have in the Modern Manufacturing industry.

Finally, this article from the Harvard Business Review focuses on how Companies like Autodesk are increasing B2B sales with help from machine learning tools.

That's it for this week. Let us know if you have any suggestions for topics you'd like us to explore in future Recommended Read posts.

Doug Heise, VP Marketing

Doug Heise

How an omnichannel CMS turns in-store screens into sales

How an omnichannel CMS turns in-store screens into sales 

Imagine this: You're walking past a local energy provider’s store. A screen in the window displays a personalized offer for your postcode. You’ve...
Soeren Stamer ceo white male glasses

Sören Stamer

Introducing In-Preview Editing for CoreMedia Content Cloud

Introducing In-Preview Editing for CoreMedia Content Cloud

Edit content directly in the preview with the In-Preview Editing Extension — no tab switching, no guesswork. Just fast, intuitive updates that...
Sebastian Buettner profile

Sebastian Büttner

LLMs changed the rules of search How to succeed in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) with CoreMedia

LLMs changed the rules of search: How to succeed in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) with CoreMedia

Search optimization isn’t about climbing rankings anymore. It is about being part of an AI-generated answer.
Marjolein van der Kolk-Mai

Marjolein van der Kolk-Mai

Digital accessibility is no longer optional_article

Digital accessibility is no longer optional: How the European Accessibility Act redefines inclusion

Starting in June 2025, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) will come into force across the European Union, setting minimum accessibility...
Mariana Gaspar

Mariana Gaspar

Soeren presentation at connect 2025

Is your CX as smart as you think? Sören Stamer on leading the intelligent CX revolution

At CoreMedia Connect & Partner Engage 2025, CoreMedia’s CEO and Co-Founder Sören Stamer took the stage with a bold promise: to challenge...
Mariana Gaspar

Mariana Gaspar

Connect and Partner Engage 2025

The Intelligent CX Revolution: Highlights from Connect & Partner Engage 2025

On May 15, 2025, digital innovators, business leaders and strategic partners met at the Kehrwieder Theater in Hamburg for CoreMedia’s annual...
Mariana Gaspar

Mariana Gaspar

Customer profiles: How to build and use them for smarter personalization

Customer profiles: How to build and use them for smarter personalization

Why do some brand interactions feel effortless, like they were made just for you, while others fall flat? The answer often lies in how well a...
Mariana Gaspar

Mariana Gaspar

CoreMedia now

29 years of CoreMedia: A story of curiosity, code and (a little) chaos

From a tiny corner office with green floors and controversial furniture to powering digital experiences for the world’s leading brands.
Mariana Gaspar

Mariana Gaspar

Enhancing digital experiences with location-based personalization

Enhancing digital experiences with location-based personalization

People are tired of one-size-fits-all marketing. These days, they expect brands to know them and to understand what they like, need and care about.
Sebastian Buettner profile

Sebastian Büttner

CoreMedia Girls Day 2025 Feature

Empowering the next generation of women in tech: Celebrating Girls' Day at CoreMedia

Our Hamburg office was buzzing with energy because it was Girls' Day today! This nationwide event gives teenage girls the chance to discover...
white female barbara eigner

Barbara Eigner