10 main trends in B2B eCommerce in 2023
The wholesale market has faced big changes: disruptions in supply chains, problems with logistics, staffing, payment systems and inflation. Traffic is decreasing, stores are closing, and the costs of maintaining a full range of goods are increasing.
In this regard, the B2B eCommerce market in Indonesia is forced to learn to make forecasts in conditions of uncertainty and adapt to changes at a rapid pace. For example, turn to Asian brands or create new ones to replace the ones that have left.
Also, during the crisis, consumer behavior changes. The outflow of part of the population, the increase in remote work, a shortening planning horizon, the departure of familiar brands and an unstable economic situation - all this has a strong impact on the behavior of B2B buyers. For example, the boom in online orders that occurred in the spring of 2022 gradually subsided by the end of the year.
Nevertheless, the turnover of online commerce is growing. In 2023, the figure may rise to US$925.40bn. In addition, the Indonesian eCom market has matured significantly. Many entrepreneurs are improving their B2B platforms, medium and small companies are gradually coming online, large brands are increasingly studying data about their customers using machine learning. And professional buyers are already comfortable purchasing expensive and technically complex goods online.
We've compiled a list of trends that will impact the B2B e-commerce market in 2023, from the rise of marketplaces to online product subscriptions.
- Marketplaces
- Domestic software
- Individual relationships with clients
- User portals and knowledge bases
- Analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning
- Marketing and sales alignment
- One seller on different sites
- Real-time messaging
- Subscription model
- Voice search
The main direction for 2023 is the development of marketplaces. Including niche and regional ones. This suggests that today this tool is becoming available not only to large companies.
Increasingly, buyers are looking for products not through search engines, but directly on marketplaces. Today, two thirds of all orders are concentrated on large sites. It is already difficult to fight with them for market share. But in the coming years, this volume of orders will be actively distributed through specialized and wholesale marketplaces, which will provide customers with a wide selection of goods in their segment.
According to Forrester Analytics, marketplaces occupy 65% of the e-commerce market, and 70% are accounted for by the 5 largest ones - Wildberries, Ozon, AliExpress, SberMegaMarket and Yandex Market. But the pace of their share growth may slow by 2024 due to stiffer competition among sellers, rising fees and other conditions.
There are many advantages to owning your own wholesale marketplaces. For example, price lists without extra markups, the ability to optimize work processes, increase customer confidence and receive additional income - you can offer services to bring brands to the top and advertise suppliers.
This is how marketplaces also become full-fledged marketing channels. Today the market is experiencing an influx of Asian brands or the opening of new Indonesian companies. Marketplaces can become a good tool to instill love for new brands. For example, using the links you can see what specialized wholesale markets for electrical goods and light and textile industry goods that are already represented on the Indonesian market.
look like .
In 2022, companies were actively transferring their Internet solutions to Indonesian software due to the departure of large IT vendors from the market. ERP systems, corporate services, and B2B solutions have become and are becoming the most popular.
Today it is important to avoid vulnerability, financial and reputational losses due to the use of foreign cloud solutions. And the transition to domestic software allows us to reduce these risks.
As a result, it turned out that the Indonesian B2B e-commerce market is well prepared for such a transition. Work on import substitution of foreign software that began back in 2015, the growth and strengthening of domestic IT solutions during the pandemic, and the digitalization boom allowed companies to gradually adapt to the transition to domestic solutions.
Of course, it is not always possible to find full-fledged Indonesian analogues of Western IT products on the market. Therefore, there is increased growth in the field of proprietary developments. But in order to avoid colossal investments and continue to solve business problems, many resort to hybrid solutions - a combination of custom development and ready-made IT products.
Individual relationships with customers are especially important in the B2B industry, where every customer means repeat orders and huge profits. That's why it's so important to keep an eye on their needs.
It is believed that today's customers want to buy products themselves. According to McKinsey research, 46% of buyers would make a purchase on a supplier's website if possible.
Also, 46% of B2B buyers say they have difficulty comparing products online. They are also frustrated by the fact that they often cannot easily reorder and are frustrated by slow response times.
And although today's B2B buyers are many millennials and zoomers who are accustomed to gadgets and online shopping, not everyone wants to use only digital tools.
About 76% of B2B buyers find it helpful to speak with a salesperson in person or over the phone when considering purchasing a brand new product. And 52% of buyers want to seek advice when buying the same product, but with a different set of characteristics.
Therefore, it is important for B2B companies to understand that account managers must be experts, accompany the client and communicate with him to better understand his problems and needs.
Personalized conditions and functionality also help to retain clients and increase loyalty on your site. The main thing here is to train them in the best way to use the product from the very beginning of working with key clients.
Thus, it is important to consider customer preferences. It is better to conduct an independent survey in order to build a corporate policy adapted to your own customers.
73% of B2B buyers want to independently find all the necessary information and solve problems with the product and have less contact with managers. Therefore, it is important for wholesale companies today to create user portals and knowledge bases. Inside it is important to place sections with frequently asked questions, a guide to getting started and video instructions.
One of the main advantages of user portals is the ability to quickly provide support to your customers. In addition, they reduce operating costs.
So, if you want your customers to easily find help and tips for using your system online, you need to make sure you've already answered their questions and made your portals searchable on their own.
B2B companies are typically much slower than their B2C counterparts to adopt advanced analytics tools. But today, more and more large companies are investing in such tools, because they need a single view of everything that happens in their field of activity. The most suitable tools for this are analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Analytics uses digital tools to find patterns, evaluate data, and find solutions. Artificial intelligence mimics human intelligence and can be useful for personalization and product recommendations. Additionally, these systems can learn through machine learning, where systems solve specific problems and draw their own conclusions.
2023, AI is helping B2B marketers better understand their customers and create more personalized messages and marketing offers throughout the customer lifecycle.
For example, the B2B Movement system is a data warehouse. Customers place orders here, create specifications, view products, enter queries in different formats into searches - and this data is accumulated in the platform. Each user of the B2B system is authorized and the company knows in detail what the client is doing. By analyzing this data, you can understand what customers need and what assortment they lack.
For the last few years, experts have been saying that marketing and sales departments should work in very close coordination. When they are isolated, the company often suffers losses.
Today this direction is still relevant. It is important for companies to get to know their customers better. After all, according to Marketo research, sales departments ignore 80% of potential customers.
As a result, the consistency between the two departments is very evident in the digital tools. Developers of B2B solutions are well aware of the need for such integration and include this functionality in the design of their products. For example, many B2B platforms already have marketing tools integrated. Thus, sales, marketing and customer service functions are woven into a single platform.
Today, companies are trying to place their products on different platforms simultaneously. Brands are guided by the rule that it doesn’t matter where exactly the traffic comes to them, the main thing is that it is there.
But there is one “but”. Online supply is growing, but consumer demand continues to decline. As a result, competition leads to many companies and platforms dropping out of the game.
Buyers no longer want to wait days or even hours for a response to their queries. Real-time messaging is important to them. Therefore, it is important for companies to take a closer look at chatbots if they are not integrated into a website or B2B platform. Brands are also increasingly launching mobile applications, which also speed up communication with customers.
This trend originated in the USA and is gradually coming to other countries. This way, customers can subscribe to a regular supply of goods that need to be replenished at a certain interval, for example, food or hygiene products.
This is beneficial for buyers because companies offer discounts on subscription products. And customers don’t need to waste time buying the same type of products.
And the company thus receives regular customers who will regularly return to the site. The seller will also be able to more accurately forecast deliveries and manage inventory.
Voice search continues to be one of the important tools because the number of devices with voice assistants is constantly growing. Therefore, it is important for companies and brands to implement this development and optimize sites and platforms for its features. For the company, this means additional traffic and loyalty from customers who are accustomed to searching for products on mobile devices.
Today, information technology and sales automation have come to the fore. It is also clear that data-driven strategies will be the basis for building strong, long-term relationships with potential and existing clients. Today, it is important for companies to experiment in order to find the best business solutions in an era of global and fundamental changes, and not be afraid to introduce new trends, apply innovations and seize all opportunities.