19 Examples of Consumer To Business

John Spacey, March 05, 2021

Consumer to business, or C2B, is any business model where individual non-professionals sell to a business. This is a long term trend that may eventually replace all employment of professionals with services offered by individuals. The following are illustrative examples.

Farming

Imagine a city where everyone has a rooftop garden that is mostly managed by small robots. Such gardens might generate a surplus that locals could sell to supermarkets and restaurants using an app or service.

Media

An advertising firm that licenses photos from an individual photographer who features their works online.

Publishing

Authors are often only picked up by large publishers after then have achieved some degree of success on their own. As such, the publishing industry has long resembled a consumer-to-business model.

Film

The cost of film production could drop dramatically due to advancements in technology such that amateurs may be able to produce high quality works that are marketed to businesses such as streaming services and theatres. Consumers could also participate in any element of film production, for example producing 3d models or environments.

Promotion

Payments to individual influencers for promoting products and services.

Fashion

Fashion that is designed as a competition. This could be completely run by consumers using design tools and systems for rating prospective designs.

Environment

Businesses that reward consumers for some type of environmental clean up such as retrieving ocean plastic from beaches. This would assume that in the future businesses are responsible for the end-to-end environmental impact of their operations and products.

Retail

Consumers can sell into ecommerce markets and already dominant in areas such as used goods. This is mostly a consumer-to-consumer market but businesses buy from these markets as well.

Science

Individual participation in science has enormous potential that has hardly been tapped. For example, a study based on sensor readings collected from millions of individual smart phones. It is also likely that science enthusiasts will eventually challenge institutions by becoming the dominant source of new discoveries. This will be enabled by apps and devices that make science more accessible.

Finance

Consumers essentially lend to businesses with bank deposits and investments such as stocks.

Transport

People who purchase self driving electric cars who lend them out whenever they aren't using them. This could be managed with an app whereby the owner schedules their own use and releases the vehicle for rental at all other times.

Energy

Consumers who own solar panels who sell excess power to a grid.

Computing

Consumers who sell computing cycles to businesses when they aren't using their devices. In future, this could reduce or eliminate the need for data centers.

Coding

Coding competitions that replace the work of contractors. This becomes more likely due to high level languages that make programming an exercise of imagination as opposed to technical know-how.

Information Technology

Consumer design and implementation of technologies consumed by businesses such as a mobile app. It is increasingly easy for consumers to produce viable technology products using high level constructs such as platforms.

Music

Music has always drawn vast participation whereby musicians are often viewed as amateurs until they have some commercial or institutional success. This resembles a consumer-to-business model. For example, a student band that scores a local hit that is then signed by a record label.

Education

Higher education is currently dominated by high status institutions that essentially sell status as much as they facilitate learning. This is expensive and somewhat dysfunctional such that it is easy to imagine students and knowledgeable individuals self-organizing something better. This is consumer-to-consumer but businesses also purchase training and education for their staff.

Hospitality

Individuals who lend out their properties when they aren't in use. Another example of consumer-to-consumer that can also be consumer-to-business.

Professional Services

In theory, a large number of professions can be challenged by non-professionals using technology. For example, an app that allows anyone to architect a building that is architectural sound. Such an app could allow all architecture to be developed as competitions allowing amateur enthusiasts to challenge professionals.

Notes

The influence of consumers on the economy has increased for the past 100+ years in a broad trend known as the consumer economy. Consumers are increasingly participating in value production in another trend known as long tail. The direction of these trends indicates that consumers may eventually dominate all aspects of economic production such that the only businesses will be those that facilitate this process. In other words, consumer-to-consumer and consumer-to-business may challenge all industries and professions with time.