The majority of B2B organisations now offer customers the option of purchasing online, according to a report by Accenture. But the majority of customers prefer to continue purchasing offline. The survey also found that customer resistance to online purchasing is preventing the rise of online sales for almost two-thirds of B2B firms. Channel Shift: Measuring B2B Efforts to Shift Customers Online looks at the current state of B2B e-commerce buying and at how organisations are shifting customers to online purchasing channels.

The survey, of 50 digital and e-commerce leaders from US-based B2B organisations with at least $500 million in annual revenue, found that the differences between B2C and B2B buying experiences are contracting. Despite this, the actual portion of US B2B companies that see more than half of their revenue transacted online is still only about 19 per cent, suggesting there is much still to do to before B2B catches up with B2C.

Key findings from the study include:

• one-third of customers in 59 per cent of B2B organisations transact online;
• 86 per cent of B2B organisations allow customers to purchase online; the remaining 14 per cent have no online purchasing options;
• 92 per cent of B2B organisations rely on email marketing to promote online sales;
• 64 per cent of B2B organisations claim that their long-term customers’ resistance to change is a barrier to driving more online sales.

Bob Barr, managing director at Accenture Interactive, said “The findings show that one major resistance factor to eCommerce sales comes from within the organization itself. For a B2B organization to get their customers to start buying online, business leaders must first drive employee evangelism by pushing their own sales teams to implement change instead of staying set in their original ways of doing business, mainly offline.”

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CTMfile Take: the results of this survey by Accenture won't surprise many. As CTMfile reported last week, the cheque is still strong in US B2B payments.