Business-to-Business vs Business-to-Consumer

Who buys and who uses

Business-to-consumer (B2C) means selling to individuals. The same person may choose, pay for, and use the product. Business-to-business (B2B) means selling to organisations. Managers or procurement teams may buy a product that employees use, while security, finance, and administrators have their own requirements.

B2B purchases often involve longer evaluations, contracts, connections to existing systems, user permissions, and rollout across an organisation. B2C products often let people sign up on their own; each customer typically spends less than an organisation buying for a team. A team might measure success by organisation-wide adoption and contract renewals in B2B, or individual use and retention in B2C.

A spectrum, not two sealed boxes

The same product may serve freelancers, small companies, and large enterprises. Some companies sell to businesses whose customers then use the product, a model called B2B2C. These labels are a starting point: teams still need to learn who buys, who uses, what each group needs, and what support they expect.