Think about the products and services you and your family use on a regular basis. Some of them - whether it’s Netflix, Prime, Spotify, or the Apple ecosystem - become so ingrained in our routines that someone would have to pay us a lot of money to swear them off for the rest of our lives.

This dependence enables the companies to charge higher prices while limiting the risk of customer loss.

And as strong as some business-to-consumer (B2C) switching costs can be, business-to-business (B2B) switching costs can be even stronger.

If I’m inconvenienced as a customer, I might be annoyed for a brief period, but an inconvenience for a business could have rippling effects and impact many people.