A comparative study on B2B interaction

Onay's hierarchy of B2B interaction

The events industry has finally found its long-awaited burning platform. Whether it be conferences, tradeshows or hosted buyer events, Covid-19 is taking a devastating toll on all of our businesses and nobody is immune (not sorry for the pun)

The knee-jerk reaction of our industry has been two-fold. 

1-    Launch a flurry of half-baked digital placeholders (and some good ones truth be told)

2-    Do nothing and dust-off the good-old “we’re social creatures” argument and serve it as a cure-all (yet again)

Personally guilty of both, I think we need to start putting some real science behind the latter sometime soon. 

I’ve been (albeit silently) feeling a bit uneasy about the ‘social creatures’ thesis for a long while now. Whilst instinctively believing it, the sheer lack of scientific evidence generally provided and the snobbish carelessness not to do so have been worrying. The ‘feeling’ is there, but the one-voice choir (all of us) standing behind this thesis relies on not much else. Afterall the whole industry is built on the marginal utility of F2F vs other modes of communication. We get paid when nothing but the best (F2F) will do the job.

So, I’ve put the time handed back to me by my last boss to good use and gone back to my academic roots to do some literature review and proper thinking. Sparing the reader from an academic tone and lots of quotations here, here’s what I’ve deducted:

First of all, we need to categorise modes of B2B interaction available to us. I’ve boiled these down to:

• Face-to-Face (and in person)

• Video Call (potentially the new face-to-face via Virtual&Hybrid Shows)

• Audio (only) Call

• Instant Messaging (including social platforms)

• Email (there’s no escaping it)

• Social Media (your brand’s accounts)

• Web (your website)

Then I’ve added in a layer of characteristics which determine the quality of the interaction achieved at each mode:

• Undivided attention <-> shared attention (varying degrees of)

• In-person <-> Interfaced

• Spoken <-> Written

• Ephemeral <-> Permanent (recorded, indexed, searchable, accessible)

• Realtime <-> Asynchronous

• Conversational <-> One way

A quick superposition of the two churns out the hierarchy pyramid below, which I’d like to (shamelessly) call Onay’s Hierarchy of B2B interaction.

Face-to-Face is in person, spoken in real-time and an ephemeral, thus unrecorded and confidential conversation, which puts it atop this hierarchy. The undivided, direct attention of both parties enables them to build trust (from scratch) and solve complex problems together, negotiate and conduct business. The rest of the modes listed below deliver parts of this proposition at descending order and we need to focus our attention on the marginal utility in between them and F2F as that is primarily our product. 

A Videocall and an Audiocall are both interfaced, but still real-time and an oral conversation, and thus beat all other modes of interaction listed below them. The friction of the interfaces and the cognitive signal loss make it considerably harder (but not impossible) to establish initial trust between parties. This being said, most videocall software are now augmenting the experience of their interface with higher video and audio quality, presentation and polling capabilities and other innovative features, ever aiming to close the cognitive gap with in-person F2F. The value to be put on this attention gap by B2B customers remains an unknown that will shape the future of our industry.

An instant message is in between real-time and asynchronous whilst still a conversation but a recorded, traceable and searchable one in the written word. The medium by design is (mostly) not open to unknown parties therefore is not used for an initial contact. In return the inner-circle feel created allow for closer and more open contact between parties. This and the way instant messaging apps are designed, make them a much more attention driving medium compared to the rest of this hierarchy below. This being said, the quasi-real-time effect is not guaranteed, and the attention gap is much wider compared to an audio or video call. 

An email is asynchronous and generally a conversation. The parties are not present at the environment in which they are replied to and replies take much longer than instant messages, which makes it an easier medium to be formal and argumentative. The fully searchable nature of the records allows for iterative information sharing but also limit the openness of the conversation. By this point attention share of this mode of communication is unmeasurable. 

Social media is (generally) asynchronous and rarely a (mostly public) conversation. The platforms data mine every word written and every interaction on the platform and decide which content is prioritised. Therefore, the user does not have 100% control of what they see or who sees their replies and when. The medium is by its nature not trust building. The share of attention by this point is the lowest of all modes listed here. (between two cat videos)  

Web is an asynchronous and one-way medium where very little interaction takes place. This one-way nature is used for informative monologues that marketers like to end with forms to be able to climb the ladder of this hierarchy towards email and potentially even further up! 

With this framework in hand, we also need to understand What the marginal utility of in-person F2F is? When and for Which circumstances the characteristics of in-person F2F are irreplicable and irreplaceable. The events industry would need to build its case on these pillars going forward. Here’s what I’ve come across in my quick literature review:

There is ample evidence on the superiority of Face-to-Face interaction and my hierarchical model is another way of looking at it. Moreover, I’ve identified three characteristics where F2F is significantly overperforming all other forms of communication and thus is the ‘only way’ forward. These are:

• Trust Building (new connections, new business)

• Complex Problem Solving (negotiation)

• Speed of Solution (undivided attention)

Looking forward to your comments and contributions. Please do share and comment, I’m looking for a cross pollination of ideas and learning from your experiences. 

Kind regards

Dr. Barış Onay

Selected references:

A study* in 2009 concludes that videoconferencing is chosen for contexts such as information exchange, management, and training and consulting whereas F2F meetings are chosen for contexts such as negotiations, marketing demonstrations, and business discussions.

According to a 2012 study** that surveyed 1411 air business travellers show that Video Conferencing is generally preferred to F2F meetings when the meeting participants already know each other or have perhaps met F2F on former occasions.

Another study*** published at the McKinsey Quarterly in August 2017 surveyed more than 1,000 buyers in four countries in a range of industries to find that 76% of B2B Buyers find it helpful to speak to a salesperson when they are researching a new product or service. That figure falls to around 50% for repeat purchases of products with new or different specifications, and to 15% when repurchasing exactly the same product or service.

The Mckinsey study*** also shows that slow response times are by far the biggest frustration point for buyers at 40%, bigger even than pricing issues at 19%. This goes to show how F2F can speed things up. Lack of F2F interaction is also listed separately at 13%.

A 2018 PH.D thesis**** on communication and trust concludes that F2F has the highest cognitive trust score compared to Video and Audio calls. But the gap between F2F and VC is smaller than the gap between VC and Audiocalls. Which might be explained with a strain of thought called the media richness theory. Where the richness of the medium limits the maximum trust that can be built on it. Therefore, the trust gap between these modes of communication is widening at each step downwards with F2F crowned at the top.

*Lu, J. L., & Peeta, S. (2009). Analysis of the factors that influence the relationship between business air travel and videoconferencing. Transportation Research Part A, 43, 709-721.

**Videoconferencing as a Mode of Communication: A Comparative Study of the Use of Videoconferencing and Face-to-Face Meetings, Denstadli et al. Journal of Business and Technical Communication 26(1) 65-91 

***WHEN B2B BUYERS WANT TO GO DIGITAL—AND WHEN THEY DON’T, McKinsey Quarterly in August 2017, Christopher Angevine, Candace Lun Plotkin, and Jennifer Stanley 

**** Baker, Anthony Lee, "Communication and Trust in Virtual and Face-to-Face Teams" (2018). Dissertations and Theses. 409.