A tentative journey to ‘point and click’

Abstract

Online business-to-business (B2B) sales and marketing have ramped up considerably since the dot-com bust of the early 2000s. With a steady increase in the number of e-commerce platforms over the past 5 years, it would appear that even the chemical industry is headed in the direction of point-and-click buying and selling. It has a long way to go, however. And it is moving slowly. Few were surprised that e-commerce in chemicals failed to fly 20 years ago. In addition to the complicated mix of logistics, pricing, safety, and regulatory concerns involved in buying and selling chemicals, dealmaking in the industry has long hinged on personal relationships. Although lab-chemical suppliers successfully introduced online buying for their research customers, the barriers to establishing Amazon-like storefronts for industrial chemicals seemed insurmountable. That view changed, however, as the industry threw its weight into digitalization programs and the concept of B2B e-commerce evolved toward more