首席执行官如何通过建立新的B2C业务来超越竞争对手

McKinsey Digital PracticeHow CEOs can outcompete by buildingnew B2C businesses Companies across sectors are looking for new growth beyond their cores.Three consumer-focused strategies can deliver long-term revenue gains. byArun Arora,Ido Segev, andSub Datta When is a medical-device manufacturernot just a medical-device manufacturer? When it’salso an online marketplace for consumers to buy wellness products and get advice fromhealthcare providers. Amid unrelenting pressure from digital-first competitors, McKinseyanalysis finds that established companies across sectors are increasingly building newbusiness-to-consumer (B2C) businesses to capture their share of the $25 trillion B2C market. B2C business building is gaining traction because the traditional corporate strategy playbook isno longer enough todrive significant growth inside or outside a company’s core. Businessbuilding can create entirely new revenue streams. AMcKinsey Global Surveyof more than 1,100CEOs found thatcompanies that allocate 20 percent of their growth capitalto creating newbusinesses achieve two percentage points higher revenue growth than companies that do notinvest similarly.1 CEOs who want to dive into B2C business building can start by identifying existing data andassets in their companies that could underpin new consumer offerings. Our research shows thatmore than 80 percent of companies have at least one underutilized asset that could form thebackbone of a new business (Exhibit 1). This initial analysis is especially important for CEOs ofbusiness-to-business (B2B) companies, who may not be used to selling directly to consumersand will need to take measured steps to build B2C businesses that scale effectively. Based onour experience helping build more than 700 new businesses, this article provides provenstrategies that CEOs can use to successfully build and scale B2C businesses. NewB2C businesses can take many forms. We found three categories to be strong bets forleaders thinking about building new B2C businesses, irrespective of industry sector: advice-as-a-service, embedded services, and B2B2C businesses. Each allows companies to leverage theircore underutilized assets to create entirely new revenue streams (Exhibit 2). These threecategories represent more than 90 percent of B2C business builds that, in our experience, havedelivered outsize results, with each type of business attaining high revenue multiples (Exhibit 3). —Advice-as-a-service: These are businesses that build on their already established credibilityto provide consumers with insights on specific topics (for example, wealth management,medical education, and automotive repair). For most companies, building a B2C advice-as-a-service business entails providing guidance about a core or adjacent product to a newconsumer customer base. An example of this is Redfin, which built on its core expertise as areal estate market analytics company to expand into providing consumers with homepurchasing and mortgage advice, ultimately becoming a full-service broker for homebuyersalong every step in the journey. —Embedded services: These are businesses that integrate consumer-focused products orservices such as e-commerce offerings, payments, healthcare, or logistics directly into thecompany’s core business to gain broader market reach. An example of this is Stripe, whichstarted as a B2B payments company but later built a full-service platform for merchants withembedded tools for invoicing, tax preparation, revenue reporting, and more—and then rolledthese services out to new and existing customers. Exhibit1 —B2B2C: These are businesses that offer consumer-facing solutions in partnership with thecore company’s B2B customers. These businesses allow an enterprise company to connectdirectly with consumers to create more value for everyone involved in the process, includingB2B partners. An example of this is OpenTable, which provides a core B2B service of onlinereservations to its restaurant customers but later expanded to offer a data-driven B2Ccustomer relationship management (CRM) platform that restaurants can use to createtargeted consumer marketing campaigns and gain insights about their customers and diningtrends. Exhibit2 Exhibit3 Advice-as-a-service Advice-as-a-service businesses solve a growing consumer conundrum: decision overload.These businesses help consumers navigate overwhelming choices on products and services insaturated markets by providing expert recommendations and guidance. Leveraging theirestablished brand reputations, companies can launch advice-as-a-service businesses thatprovide consumers with trusted, curated content. This is especially true in markets whereconsumers need specialized knowledge to evaluate multiple product options, such as inhealthcare and financial planning (see sidebar “Advice-as-a-service case study”).CEOs whowant to build advice-as-a-service businesses can very often find success with one of these fiveprimary business models. Adv