Perils and Profits Line the B2B Path (April 2001)

April, 2001

$45.00

The reality of business-to-business (B2B) commerce is that purchasers seldom achieve a discount better than 5 percent more than they could have gained through negotiating in the old brick-and-mortar world. Many times the savings from B2B transactions are not even that good. This lack of savings from online trading helps explain the fact that purchasers have been slow coming to B2B and that most agreements they had with their traditional suppliers remain in place. Clearly B2B merchants will have to do better to wean buyers from their usual way of doing business.