` Have you ever wondered how all those products you buy every day get to those stores or how that website is able to ship you what you want? Have you ever wondered how all those companies have those products ready and waiting for you? Well, I can tell you that they just don't appear out of nowhere! Companies use what is called a supply chain to allow them to provide consumers with the products they want and need. What exactly is a supply chain and how does it ensure that everyone gets what they need? In this document we will define a supply chain and also take a look at business to business supply chains and business to consumer supply chains and see how they differ and how they are similar. Investopedia.com defines a supply chain as follows: “Supply chains include every company that comes into contact with a particular product. For example, the supply chain for most products will include all companies that produce parts of the product, they assemble it, deliver it and sell it." (www.investopedia.com) There are many different types of products and services that provide consumers with what they need or want, but they all have one thing in common and that is that they use a supply chain to make this possible. There are two main types of supply chains today and they are called business to business supply chains and business to consumer supply chains. In this document, Business to Business supply chains will be defined as B2B and Business to Consumer as B2C. The main difference between B2B and B2C supply chains is the amount of channels a product goes through before reaching the end user. B2B supply chains have fewer channels overall and are larger in size, while B2C supply chains have a greater number of smaller channels overall. To understand how the two work, it's important to understand the process a company will go through to achieve a specific outcome. For example, if you consider a bicycle manufacturer that needs to purchase wheels for its product, there are only a few channels involved. They would go directly to a tire manufacturer and get the parts they needed. (www.toolsgroup.com) A simple example of a B2B supply chain would be: The bicycle manufacturer -> the tire manufacturer -> the raw material retailers.