Just as organizations realized, over four decades ago, that a deep understanding of brand could provide significant financial value to organizations, so it is with customer experience planning today. Recent studies by Gartner, Forrester, and Maritz all indicate the leading organizations are more than doubling their investment in understanding and planning their customer experiences compared to the previous five-year period.

Last week, Amazon launched Business Prime, giving customers of its industrial supply division access to the free two-day shipping benefit that has garnered regular (consumer) Amazon Prime more than 80 million members.

Amazon Business offers a full range of B2B supplies, from hydraulic valves to lab equipment. Launched just two years ago, the B2B e-commerce vertical has grown rapidly: It’s now available in five countries (the U.S., Germany, the UK, Japan, and India), and over the summer, it surpassed the 1 million customer milestone in the U.S.

Why are B2B shoppers flocking to Amazon Business?

On September 18, Toys“R”Us buckled under its $5 billion in debt and declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company pinned particular blame on their Babies“R”Us business, which accounts for nearly 40% of sales. Specifically, the company bemoaned intense competition and “very, very aggressive pricing online.”

Indeed, Amazon, with its bottom-of-the-barrel pricing, accounts for 19.6% of online baby products sales, versus Toys“R”Us’s 5.1%, according to IBISWorld. And the problem only threatens to get worse, as the number of millennial parents increases.

In the spring of 2008, I had a client who was working with the CDC. Together, they posed this question to me: "How can we get a significant mass of people to complete a diabetes risk assessment online?" Believe it or not, this had not yet been done. While there was significant online activity around diabetes education, there was no site where someone who wondered could actually complete a risk assessment and get an immediate result.

Each fall, our trend-watching team reveals "The Campos Outlook," our annual list of top business and consumer trends picks for the coming year and beyond. We talk about how consumer behavior is changing, which innovations are transforming business, and which trends should play a role in your company’s strategy.