What is the difference between consumer and commercial marketing?

[robert m]

Suggest one way is number of different audiences, for a sale to the consumer market you need to influence one person or maybe an extended group (e.g. family) but with B2B you have different people in very different roles - e.g. your end user/buyer may be an engineer who specifies product, a product manager who determines product requirements, a buyer - who will have corporate issues - possibly accounts people - terms & conditions - executive type - is this strategy would want to take? So your marketing need to focus on different audiences at different times in different ways

The sales cycle can be a lot longer - think MOD orders for future weapson systems the procurement system takes years so marketing has to be sustained not just a single campaign for "a spring special offer"!