The B2C2C Model

Back in the days business was either making money from consumers (b2c) or from other businesses (b2b).

Keeping myself within the frames of the World Wide Web I’ll present two new types of business models that would suit today’s businesses and information flow better.

The first one: B2C2C simply means that a company can sell one product to one consumer. The consumer can in turn either sell or share the very same product with other consumers without the company’s involvement. File sharing on illegal platforms is a great example of this. Consumer A buys a DVD from a company that sells DVD’s. Consumer A then uploads the DVD to a torrent site for instance and Consumer B and C downloads the very same content of the DVD. Consumer B and C then shares the content to Consumer D and E. And on it goes, it becomes a snowball effect that’s being controlled by the consumers rather than by the company. This can easily be implemented into various forms of media, just take sharing a Youtube clip on the social media platforms.

The power is not in the company’s hand anymore (But it will be if the cards are played right!). The company creates, the consumers distributes and shares.

The thousand-dollar question follows: How can a business make profit out of this? Since there only have to one product to satisfy a thousand people there must be a way to profit from that one sold copy. I’m talking advertisement, product placement and the whole shebang. By implementing watermarks and such into, for instance a movie you can make money out of that. Another way is to offer the most valuable consumers (the biggest sharers) an affiliate program where they can earn money and the company can control where their content is being distributed.

The B2C2C model - The originator and manufacturer provides their consumer with a product that's being distributed and marketed by the consumers.

Stay tuned for the C2B2C model!