Most people are familiar by now with e-commerce. But how about “c-commerce?”
If you haven’t heard the term before, you aren’t alone. But if you’ve ever gotten a ride from an Uber driver, stayed at an AirBnB, or purchased an item from an independent seller on a major brand’s “marketplace,” you’ve taken part in c-commerce or “collaborative commerce.” According to Gartner, c-commerce involves “electronically enabled business interactions among an enterprise’s internal personnel, business partners and customers throughout a trading community.”
This isn’t just another slick business buzz phrase – it’s a movement in business. Uber owns no taxis, AirBnB owns no hotels, and companies often don’t stock inventory from their marketplace sellers. And yet firms like these have quickly grown to dominate their market segments. Let’s look at how this trend has evolved, and what it means for you.
Understanding c-commerce
You can think of c-commerce as a natural outgrowth of online communities, such as social media. (In fact, Facebook’s own Marketplace is another example of a c-commerce community.) Instead of simply selling its products or services to consumers, c-commerce businesses leverage existing business and online relationships to find synergies and mutual benefits. Investopedia gives some examples of this including:
- Outdoors retailer Patagonia collaborating with eBay to provide a marketplace for used gear
- High-end clothing retailer Burberry leveraging social media channels to gain customer input on new product designs and marketing
- Delivery firm DoorDash teaming up with major fast food chains so they can offer home food delivery
In each of these cases, you are doing business through a major retailer – who provides the portal, the community, or the third-party relationship – while tapping into a broader network of resources from other stakeholders. These are often win-win relationship that allow brands to quickly widen their offerings, third-party vendors to tap into a much broader marketplace, and consumers to have more choices and options.
Of course, there are risks and responsibilities that come with the c-commerce territory. One is teaming up with reputable partners to protect your brand image: for example, if someone orders a Chipotle burrito for home delivery, DoorDash may be delivering it, but the consumer’s experience still reflects on their business relationship with Chipotle. As another example, AirBnB properties are the responsibilities of individual hosts, but AirBnB’s host guarantee and guest refund policies help bridge the gap between an individual transaction and a service from a chain. In general, you are putting the resources of a wider range of stakeholders under the wing of your brand.
Doing c-commerce right
From a data standpoint, c-commerce fundamentally involves adding another level of complexity to your business operations, as well as a handoff of business and client data. Having these moving parts work smoothly represents the critical difference between a well-oiled c-commerce operation and a disjointed relationship. For example:
- Your business may be a portal of entry for products or services other people provide (for example, people who make third-party purchases through your website).
- Conversely, your products or services may be distributed through third-party providers.
- You are potentially getting customer data from sources that lie outside your normal business processes.
In each of these cases, a seamless business transaction revolves around having accurate client data through the entire life cycle of the transaction. We can help ensure that your customer information is accurate, genuine and up-to-date with our flagship validation tools, no matter what touch points this data originates from or passes through.
Our delivery accuracy solutions provide proven capabilities used by many of the world’s top corporations, and you can easily add lead and order validation as well as customer insight tools to leverage your data for competitive business intelligence. All of our products have convenient API interfaces that integrate with popular business automation platforms, together with expert installation assistance, available 24/7/365 technical support, and guaranteed 99.999% uptime.
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