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To increase sustainability of their products and enable new business opportunities, manufacturers explore servitization in consumer markets. Yet, the literature has not addressed this development. This study is one of the first to investigate the challenges and benefits for manufacturers and their supply chains when engaging in business-to-consumer (B2C) servitization.

The study explores two unique cases of manufacturers of complex consumer products that aim to extend their service offerings to the end-users. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews, observations and secondary data.

First, the authors identify two factors as prerequisites for a servitized set-up: internal collaboration within the manufacturer and product characteristics (e.g. product complexity). Second, the authors identify the network as an important factor for B2C servitization, which includes the triadic set-up between manufacturer, installer and consumer. Third, the authors identify moderating institutional settings, such as regulations and consumer needs.

This research elaborates existing B2B servitization theory into an empirically informed theoretical framework for B2C contexts. It expands the view on servitization by introducing the network perspective to service a large number of geographically dispersed customers.

The purpose of this study is to understand and compare how business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) companies evaluate the return on investment (ROI) on their social media marketing (SMM) programmes and how the investment is handled in these type of marketing programmes.

A mixed-methods approach involving multiple cases and a survey was used. Data were collected from personal interviews with eight professionals responsible for SMM management, from four B2B and four B2C companies, complemented with responses to a web-based survey by the other 28 companies’ marketing managers.

The results show that there are some differences between B2B and B2C companies regarding SMM evaluation and investment but in general marketing managers for both types of firms use simple metrics to evaluate their SMM programmes. The main measures used relate to awareness, engagement and reach and most of the metrics identified are interaction-related.

Given the complex and sensitive nature of the subject, more research is needed focussed on providing additional evidence from a larger sample of B2B and B2C organizations to allow the extension of the finding to the population as the non-probabilistic nature and size of the current sample impose that the findings should be interpreted carefully. Future research should focus on understanding what the firm’s characteristics predict the importance and level of effort placed in SMM and the barriers to ROI measurement in SMM programmes, especially in B2B firms.

The current findings confirm that the topic of SMM ROI evaluation is not a priority for B2C or B2B companies. There is a need for an update of their online marketing strategy, namely, on budget definition and allocation. Furthermore, companies should increase the autonomy of SM managers, as they are dependent from marketing managers and hire specialized professionals devoted to SMM in both B2C and B2B companies.

The findings of this study contribute to improve the understanding of the evaluation of SMM and to extend the literature on the subject. It also provides a relevant advance into the assessment and understanding on the measures used to evaluate the effectiveness of SMM programmes by offering a comparison on how B2B and B2C use metrics and allocate resources to the SMM management.

This study associated consumers' food choice motives and socio-demographic characteristics with their attitudes and consumptions towards food shopping with four e-commerce modes: business-to-consumer (B2C), online-to-offline delivery (O2O Delivery), online-to-offline in-store (O2O In-store) and New Retail. It also explored consumer preferences for specific food categories within the four e-commerce modes.

An online survey was administered to 954 participants from three Chinese cities: Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Descriptive analysis and linear regression were used in the data analysis.

The following food choice motives (FCMs) and socio-demographic characteristics had a significant effect on food e-commerce attitudes and/or consumption, with some or all of the four e-commerce modes: Taste Appeal, Value for Money, Safety Concerns, Quality Concerns, Processed Convenience, Purchase Convenience, Others' Reviews, City, Gender, Household Size, Age, Income, Occupation and Marital Status. Consumers also have different consumption preferences for food categories in the four e-commerce modes.

This is the first study to associate consumer FCMs and socio-demographics with their e-commerce attitudes and consumption regarding food in four e-commerce modes: B2C, O2O Delivery, O2O In-store and New Retail.

This study aims to investigate how business-to-business (B2B) companies use message strategies on social media platform and how these strategies are effective in improving customer perceived value and encouraging customer engagement, as well as how B2B companies differ from business-to-customer (B2C) counterparts in terms of utilization and effectiveness of social media message strategy.

Based on content analysis of Sina Weibo brand pages and survey of website visitors, this paper examines the differences of social media message strategies and their impacts upon customer perceived value and customer engagement between B2B and B2C companies.

B2B companies use more rational appeals and less emotional appeals, have lower degree of informativeness and perform better in interactivity and variety than B2C companies. These five dimensions of message strategy have different roles in engaging customers via perceived value across B2B and B2C settings.

The research makes significant contributions to B2B social media marketing literature by answering two interrelated questions, namely, “What companies are doing?” and “What companies should do?” on social media websites. Besides, it provides insightful implications for B2B companies on how to implement appropriate message strategies in their social media marketing efforts by conducting Importance-Performance Analysis.

Supply chains are under increased scrutiny as consumers have become aware of the dark side of downstream production practices. Many articles and exposés have led consumers to be more conscious of purchasing products from companies who source materials in a socially responsible and ethical manner. As a result, business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumers (B2C) companies are under increased pressure to source raw materials in a transparent and ethical way. Because of the associated costs, companies then look to benefit from increased brand equity by promoting to consumers how ethical their products are. The purpose of this study is to look at the case of the food industry to analyze sustainability messaging on Twitter in both B2B and B2C companies to determine which of the dimensions of sustainability (people, profit, planet) are being emphasized.

In this study, two published dictionaries were combined to capture the three dimensions of “sustainability,” and these scales were then used to analyze Twitter posts. This study created a unique software package to classify, mine, collect and analyze Twitter data. This study used these tools to analyze 246,386 Twitter posts within a sample of 39 leading B2C and B2B food companies over a 10-year period (2012–2021) to explore brand messaging and engagement rate.

This research revealed several interesting results. These include how B2B companies have emphasized the employee (people) dimensions of sustainability, while B2C companies have had a more balanced approach that overall has prioritized the economic dimension (profit) of sustainability. The data on audience engagement revealed a mismatch between the types of sustainability messaging B2B companies and B2C companies in the food industry are posting and what engages audiences.

This study fills several gaps, including analyzing how B2B and B2C companies use sustainability language in their social media brand management, as well as looking at which dimensions of sustainability they emphasize and which ones engage audiences the most. This research is also novel in combining multiple existing scales under one project to analyze the triple bottom line in the analysis of qualitative texts.

The purpose of this paper is to categorize customer‐to‐customer (C2C) interaction as a sub‐component of relational capital and conceptualize C2C interaction adding value to business‐to‐customer (B2C) relational capital.

This work empirically tests the concept of C2C interaction and its added value to a firm's B2C relationship within the movie industry. Both business data and consumer interaction from blockbuster movies are collected to test their impact on movie sales.

The results support the hypotheses that C2C interaction (user messages on Yahoo movie message board) adds more explanation to movie sales than B2C interaction (advertising budget) alone, and that there is an inverse relationship between the impact of a firm's B2C interaction and C2C interaction on a firm's sales performance, with the former diminishing over time and the latter increasing over time.

For intellectual capital (IC) researchers, the main implication from the results of this paper is that the value of C2C is “in addition” to the existing customer relations already managed by the firm. The results of this paper confirm C2C relational capital within the movie context. Future research should use more textual‐based data to evaluate the positive and negative consumer interactions and their impact on IC value.

The findings of this paper stress the importance of practitioners, including the voice of customers in their financial reporting. Managers can now extract and incorporate the content of C2C interaction to a firm's day‐to‐day decision‐making process.

The originality of this paper resides in extending relational capital conceptual framework by dividing relational capital into B2C and C2C subcomponents, hypothesizing the added value of C2C interaction to B2C relational capital and the inverse relationship between B2C and C2C relational capital over time, and empirically providing a reference sample for practitioners for future IC reporting.

The paper aims to make a contribution by providing a comprehensive understanding of the scope of the implementation of sustainable marketing tools in SMEs operating in the food and drink industry in Europe. The focus will be put on the identification of differences between companies operating in business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) context.

The empirical basis is a survey of 770 European SMEs, of which 369 operate in Western European countries (including UK, Germany and Spain) and 401 in Central and Eastern Europe (including Poland, Croatia and Russia). The respondents in the particular countries were stratified according to company size, measured by the number of employees. The research covered 316 micro companies, 5 small companies and 209 medium ones. The questionnaire was completed by the managing directors of the enterprises (CEOs) or heads of the marketing departments (CMOs). The research was conducted between April 2016 and January 2017. An in-depth analysis of the findings helped to identify differences between the two groups of SMEs, i.e. operating in the B2B and B2C context, in terms of the extent of sustainable marketing implementation. The non-parametric U Mann–Whitney test was used to examine the significance of the differences between the two groups of companies.

The research results suggest that both groups of B2B and B2C companies implement sustainable marketing tools to some extent. However, in most cases, B2B organizations do it to a significantly greater extent. Nevertheless, these activities relate mainly to those tools, which are directly visible to customers, both institutional and individual, such as packaging, product ingredients or certificates. To a lesser extent, they involve marketing activities of an internal nature, such as production process and the level of energy, water or resources used.

To the best knowledge of the author, this is the first empirical research study on the implementation of the sustainable marketing concept in SMEs operating in European countries. The study is a comparative analysis of the phenomenon between B2B and B2C companies, which has not been previously researched.

Given the importance of logistics operations in business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce and growing interest in the related environmental effects, the purpose of this paper is to offer an up-to-date literature review on the topic of B2C e-commerce environmental sustainability, specifically from a logistics perspective.

The analysis focussed on a set of 56 papers published from 2001 to 2014 in 38 peer-reviewed international journals. The papers were analyzed and categorized according to the main features of the paper, the research method(s) adopted and the themes tackled.

There is a growing interest in sustainability issues. In the last 14 years, the focus has progressively shifted from the mere identification of the wide-ranging environmental effects of e-commerce to the need for a quantitative evaluation of their impact, although much remains to be done in this regard. Some industries, such as books and grocery, have largely been addressed, however, promising sectors in the e-commerce field, such as clothing and consumer electronics, have only been considered to a certain degree. Moreover, despite the emerging role of multichannel strategies, the environmental implications of the related logistics activities have not yet been studied in detail.

B2C e-commerce has grown in popularity, and its environmental implications are currently of key interest. This paper contributes to the understanding of the existing body of knowledge on this topic, presenting an up-to-date classification of articles and highlighting themes for further research activities. From a managerial perspective, this paper helps supply chain managers develop a clear understanding of both the logistics areas with the most impact on environmental sustainability and the KPIs used to quantify the environmental implications of e-commerce logistics operations comprehensively and effectively.

The aim of this chapter is to investigate the transformations undergone by dual marketers in their marketing strategies, with the advent of new digital tools. In particular, the chapter wants to emphasise the shift from a dual marketing perspective to the omnichannel approach, based on the integration of communication strategies between business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C). To this end, the chapter first analyses the theoretical contribution of the integrated marketing communication paradigm in omnichannel marketing. Then, identifying the characteristics common to the B2B and B2C markets, it maps the use of touchpoints and digital content in the dual marketers' omnichannel strategies. Moreover, the role of online personalised marketing and big data analytics tools is illustrated in order to investigate the relationship between dual marketing and big data analytics towards Industry 4.0. Lastly, the dynamics and the perspectives emerged from the literature are traced within the case study of Unicredit Italia to try to bring out the best practices for an omnichannel strategy of dual marketers.

This chapter helps to establish a characterization system for industrial and consumer companies. Marketing science shows that industrial brands and consumer brands have to be managed in significant different ways. The reason is the variety of distinctions. Marketing literature often fall back to the same definition for companies. Usually, companies are defined business-to-business (B2B) when they deal with other companies and business-to-consumer (B2C) when they make their revenues with private consumers. However, both definitions do not represent the knowledge from marketing literature about the specifications in both market categories. The characterization system here separates companies by the demand drivers (derivate and origin) of their costumers, by their communication strategy, by the roles individuals play in the buying process, and recommend the appropriate branding strategy. The results of a survey about B2B knowledge show how important such a characterizing system for the discussion is. Often managers have no clear picture of a company in terms of B2B and B2C marketing. The system helps them to find a common basis for understanding the crucial issues, based on an empirical analysis.