business-to-business

noun

busi·​ness-to-busi·​ness ˈbiz-nəs-tə-ˈbiz-nəs 

: a sector of business activity that focuses on commerce performed between businesses rather than between a business and a consumer

a company that specializes in business-to-business

Business-to-business, the sale of goods and services to other companies rather than to the public, has flourished for centuries.

—Joanne Legomsky

—usually used before another noun

Business-to-business sales rose 4.4% from a year earlier, but retail sales increased less than 1%.

—The Wall Street Journal

business-to-business companies

the business-to-business market

—abbreviation B2B

Examples of business-to-business in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

An equal partnership between Goldberg, Kurzweil and Shen, Chemistry will focus on early-stage investments, especially at Series A, in mostly business-to-business startups in areas like fintech, work software and developer and infrastructure tools. —Alex Konrad, Forbes, 23 Oct. 2024

Settled in the Atlanta area with their then-four children, Erin, a former middle-school math teacher, and Lee, a chemical engineer, teamed up to found The Hanson Group, a business-to-business provider of chemical materials. —Alex Prewitt, WIRED, 17 Oct. 2024

Her events calendar is already filled until January 2026 and carefully divided between business-to-business and business-to-consumer efforts. —Emiliana Betancourt, Variety, 11 Oct. 2024

The company is putting emphasis on car-sharing and business-to-business services like fleet management. —Peter Vanham, Fortune, 9 Oct. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1979, in the meaning defined above