cotta, which sells confectionery ingredients, is shifting its B2B e-commerce business, cotta business, away from simple price competition toward designing customers’ procurement experience. It has pursued an organisational structure that strengthens its consultative capabilities, along with customer service and product development centred on customer understanding.
cotta Co., Ltd., which sells confectionery and baking ingredients, recognised that new customer acquisition for its B2B e-commerce business, cotta business, had reached a plateau and that simply turning the offering into a catalogue did not provide sufficient consultative value. Starting with the question “Who are we?”, the company set out to shift its e-commerce strategy from price-based selling to value-based selling.
The company has continued visiting customers’ stores to listen to the actual purchasing context, and identified how information gaps caused by the large number of suppliers and event-driven demand unique to the industry have delayed digital transformation. It redefined its role as supporting customers’ procurement experience by combining four strengths: wholesaling, manufacturing, e-commerce and media.
By reducing its emphasis on price and reviewing product development and presentation, the company aimed to increase sales of new private-label products by approximately 1.5 times. Sales shifted from “selling” to “listening”, and the company strengthened the cross-functional flow of information by sharing customers’ concerns and responses through store-visit research sheets.
Customer service uses marketing automation to optimise displays according to each customer’s context. Email campaigns and point benefits were combined to prevent customer attrition, while the loyalty programme introduced monthly rankings and free-shipping tickets. As a result, the company expanded its approach to higher-spending customers, contributing to improvements in average spend per customer and gross profit.