E-commerce sites and e-marketplaces operated by and for manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers are responding to a growing demand among businesses to purchase online the supplies, tools, technologies, components and services they need to run their enterprises. With B2B e-commerce sales in the United States aloneprojected by Forrester Research Inc. to hit $780 billion this year—and surpass $1.13 trillion in just five years—e-commerce represents a sales gold mine for companies that can capably meet the requirements of business buyers, a far more daunting task than selling to consumers.

Today, Internet Retailer announced it has released never-before-revealed competitive data on the 300 largest companies driving B2B e-commerce growth. The Internet Retailer 2016 B2B E-Commerce 300 ranks the biggest manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers and retailers that sell in bulk across diverse industries on their 2015 web sales to business, government, educational and other institutional clients. As a group, these 300 companies account for around 70% of the entire B2B e-commerce market in the U.S. and are projected to grow web sales by 13.3% this year to $547.1 billion from $482.8 billion in 2014—figures that not only dwarf the U.S. B2C e-commerce market, which will reach around $350 billion this year according to industry estimates, but are also nearly double the 7% growth rate of B2B e-commerce as a whole.

From Boeing in aerospace and General Motors in autos to Johnson & Johnson in pharmaceuticals and General Electric in appliances, the 2016 B2B E-Commerce 300 provides never-before-revealed data on each of the 300 leaders of B2B e-commerce market, including their overall ranking in online B2B sales and their ranking in one of 18 industry categories in which they primarily compete. In addition to manufacturers, which account for 87% of B2B e-commerce sales as many move to the web to more efficiently process client orders, the new guide also identifies fast-growing start-ups and relatively new marketplaces like Amazon Business. Also profiled are scores of online retailers, wholesalers and distributors that are using the Internet to reach new prospects and to provide existing customers easier ways to order.

"Business buyers who now want to streamline their purchasing practices for a digital age will benefit by learning from today's B2B e-commerce leaders, the technical requirements of buying online and the proven e-commerce practices that can modernize their purchasing operations," says Paul Demery, managing editor of B2BeCommerceWorld.com.  

In addition to company profiles that highlight key financial and operational metrics, with details on each company's products, pricing and major business clients, the B2B E-Commerce 300 provides information on solutions providers across 14 technology and services categories and furnishes full corporate contact information for 462 B2B e-commerce executives worldwide.

"Manufacturers of all stripes will learn which of their peers are aggressively employing e-commerce technologies to expand their sales while at the same time reducing their sales costs and achieving higher levels of accuracy and customer satisfaction. And e-commerce technology vendors who now focus primarily on e-retailing markets will discover a gold mine of business development leads," explains Jack Love, co-founder and chairman of Vertical Web Media.