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"Although business and consumer marketeers both try to obtain customer loyalty, they do that in fundamentally different ways", says Robert Salle, professor marketing at EM Lyon.

Last week, I had an interesting phone call with Robert Salle, professor in marketing at EM Lyon Business School. He says "Business marketing and consumer marketing do have similarities, e.g. they both aim at setting up lasting relationships with their customers. However, they do that in fundamentally different ways, and according to different market mechanisms. Consumer marketeers try to increase brand loyalty. Business marketeers, on the other hand, try to establish profound relationships with their clients. In consumer marketing, there is always the same one dominant party in the relationship -- the supplier. In business marketing both client and supplier interact more intensely and both parties negotiate towards their agreement."

Industrial Marketing is called a synonym to Business Marketing, yet in languages like Dutch, the word industry is related to manufacturing and to the process industry. That is why, in many non-English countries, industrial marketing gets a much more technological connotation. For outsiders to the business marketing arena, industrial marketing is related to manufacturing.

On Wikipedia too, the industrial marketing page opens with the statement that it is really the same as business marketing. The page also warns that the word industry has connotations that might narrow the definition unintendedly: "Industrial marketing is the marketing of goods and services from one business to another. The word industrial has connotations of heavy machinery, mining, construction etc. but industrial marketing is not confined to these types of business activities."

There are plenty of good definitions on Business Marketing all over the internet.

• Let's start off with Wikipedia: "Business marketing is the practice of organizations, including commercial businesses, governments and institutions, facilitating the sale of their products or services to other companies or organizations that in turn resell them, use them as components in products or services they offer, or use them to support their operations.