In 2019, the scale of China's enterprise-level SaaS market was 36.21 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 48.7%.
The new crown epidemic in 2020 has affected the macroeconomic growth rate, but the demand for offline switching to online and remote office has instead become a driving force for the development of SaaS. It is expected that the enterprise-level SaaS market will maintain a considerable growth rate in 2020. will exceed 100 billion yuan.
In this context, various types of SaaS manufacturers will pay more attention to the value of SaaS products, data value, etc., leading manufacturers will accelerate the coverage of subdivisions, investment in the field and marketing investment, and competition in each subdivision will be more intense .
Today, Zhuge Jun talks to you about the market demand characteristics and purchase characteristics of business services (B2B).
Generally, the B2B market is much larger and more complex than the consumer market in terms of total transaction volume, number of parties per transaction, size and diversity of customer operations, duration, etc., despite the size of the B2B market Much larger than the consumer market, but the B2B market has a relatively small number of customers.
While the B2B marketplace has a much smaller number of customers, customers buy in large volumes and tend to repeat purchases on a cyclical basis. Although the B2B market is large, buyers are relatively concentrated.
Selecting a relatively concentrated circle as a target market can help companies save communication and marketing costs and increase their operating income. Therefore, the market is highly complex, large in scale, small in number of buyers, large in purchase volume, and relatively concentrated in buyers, which constitute the market structure characteristics of the B2B market.
1. Demand characteristics of B2B market
1. Derived demand from the B2B market
Enterprises purchase products or services to further produce, use or improve efficiency. Therefore, the demand in the B2B market is actually derived from the consumer market, and ultimately depends on the direct demand of consumers in the consumer market.
In this case, consumer demand for consumer goods affects not only the supply of these products, but also the services associated with the products, so the derived demand can guide the pull of the upstream market to the downstream market.
Upstream suppliers should not only care about the needs of direct customers, but also care about their customers, that is, the needs of final consumers, and increase the market demand for their products by guiding and influencing the preferences of final consumers.
2. Demand is inelastic
In the B2B market, the buyer's demand for a product or service is not greatly affected by price changes, because the purchase of the business is for further production and sales, so an increase in the price of a product cannot lead to a decrease in demand, as long as the consumer market The demand of the B2B market remains unchanged, and the demand of the B2B market generally does not change much.
In addition, the product price of most enterprise-level services tends to account for a small proportion, and most of it is due to the value created by the product, so changes in product price have little impact on the transaction, and the focus is country email list on creating value.
3. Demand fluctuates greatly
Since the demand of the B2B market is driven by the consumer market, the demand of the B2B market will fluctuate due to changes in the demand of the consumer market. According to the principle of acceleration of demand fluctuations, fluctuations in the demand of downstream products will cause greater fluctuations in upstream products, and it is difficult to quickly recover in the short term.
For example, if the consumer demand increases by a certain percentage, the demand for enterprise-level services will increase by a larger percentage in order to increase the efficiency of the additional output. A 10% increase in consumer demand may cause a 200% increase in demand for corporate products.
For example: the new crown epidemic has accelerated the process of market education: traditional offline retail, catering, procurement and other activities have been blocked, and enterprises' demand for SaaS products in retail e-commerce, collaborative office, CRM, digital procurement and other fields has increased significantly, driving some small and micro enterprises. Attempts to initially get involved in SaaS products, and progress has been made in market education.
2. The Bullwhip Effect Controls Supply Chain Fluctuations
In the supply chain, small changes in demand will gradually magnify from retailers to service providers and suppliers. This phenomenon is called the bullwhip effect. The bullwhip effect is deeply rooted and is a fundamental problem affecting the supply chain. Special attention should be paid to the design and management of the supply chain.
Let’s take an example to illustrate the bullwhip effect: Assuming a slight 2% increase in global consumer demand for computers is forecasted to be 5% when translated to Lenovo (manufacturer) and 5% when passed to Intel (Tier 1 supplier) Maybe 10%, and maybe 20% when it comes to Intel's equipment vendors (sub-suppliers).
In short, the further back you are in the supply chain, the greater the change in demand. This is like a bullwhip wielded by a western cowboy. With a slight flick of the wrist, the tip of the whip will shake greatly, drawing a beautiful arc, which may be the origin of the name "bullwhip effect".
Changes in demand are uncertain factors, and the natural response of the supply chain is to increase capacity; the greater the change in demand, the greater the capacity of the supply chain partners. The flow of funds poses great challenges.