B2B (Business to Business)

The acronym B2B stands for business-to-business. This refers to businesses supplying, catering to, and making business transactions with other businesses, instead of consumers.

How to use B2B in a sentence: “Mark’s factory is a B2B establishment—he sells electronic components to appliance manufacturers.”

How B2B Transactions Work

A B2B establishment usually involves a business buying source materials that they will use to manufacture their own products (such as a restaurant buying ingredients from a wholesaler), or a company procuring the services of a firm for their operations (like an office using an agency for janitorial services), or a business involved in the selling of the goods of another business or manufacturer (such as an electronics shop selling a particular brand of smartphone).

On the web, B2B can also refer to specialized industry portals and product supply or procurement exchanges. These are places where businesses in a specific industry are able to discuss, share knowledge, or transact with one another.