Differences between industrial and consumer product managers

Marketing decision areas and general background characteristics of industrial and consumer product managers are examined in this article. A discriminant analysis identifies those marketing decision areas that separate industrial and consumer product managers. The position of industrial product manager was found to be more of a marketing coordinator while the consumer product manager was found to be a more active decision maker.     

Reducing new product risk through understanding buyer behavior

The marketing of new industrial products can have a heavy impact on the effectiveness of customer service. The new product buying decision is always accompanied by perceived risk on the part of the buyer. Therefore, it is important for the industrial marketer of a new product to be able to empathize with this perceived risk, in order to help the buyer minimize it before the fact. This article explores industrial buying and new product adoption decision processes, and the role of perceived risk in these processes.     

Effective selling approaches to buyers' objections

Approaches for responding to an industrial buyer's indecision and price objections were uncovered. When an industrial buyer refuses to make a purchase decision or objects to price, an effective salesperson will seek understanding of the buyer's indecision, consciously look for common underlying objections, address the buyer's specific concern, and establish a decision deadline for the buyer.     

An evaluation of the BUYGRID Analytic Framework

The purpose of this study was to perform a statistical evaluation of the BUYGRID Analytic Framework (BAF) to determine whether it is a general model of industrial buying behavior. The BAF is often used as a basic reference for other research studies, even though it has never been validated.This article also provides a new approach to understanding industrial buying behavior by identifying the influence of the informal system on the formal decision process and defines a decision-process model for the informal system.     

人力资本在产业集群演化和发展机制中的作用研究

作为区域经济发展的领头模式,产业集群经济现象备受学界和政府瞩目,对其生成机制和发展路径的研究是十分必要的.以人力资本理论为视角进行研究,能够更准确地认识和理解产业集群演化和发展机理,把握其运行规律.说明人力资本对产业集群演化和创新的决定作用,对于我国产业集群的发展和升级具有积极的指导意义.必须充分发挥人力资本效应,推出一系列基于此的产业创新策略,促进产业集群的可持续发展.     

A critical review of recent organizational buying research

The purposes of this article are to examine the major contributions toward understanding industrial buying behavior and to suggest possible areas for future research. Many of the more recent studies have attempted to apply research findings in communications theory, consumer behavior, quantitative methods, and managerial decision theory in defining the decision process which constitutes industrial buying behavior. These research efforts have not been thoroughly evaluated.     

A strategic approach to industrial product pricing: The pricing plan

Price planning is one of the most overlooked areas in industrial marketing. Traditionally, emphasis is placed on product development, advertising strategy, and distribution channel formation before any consideration is given to pricing. The result is that industrial pricing decisions are made quickly without the necessary market and cost factors included in the final decision. The pricing decision is at the core of every business plan and impacts directly on the critical components of a company's marketing strategy. In this article, the importance of price planning in industrial marketing is discussed including the major components needed to make an industrial pricing strategy successful.     

Which buying decisions are made by individuals and not by groups?

Much of the recent research pertaining to industrial purchasing has focused on the buying group rather than the individual purchasing agent as primarily responsible for vendor and product selection decisions. The present research was undertaken on the premise that in certain types of industrial purchase decisions (vendor selection in modified rebuy situations), the presence of certain mediating variables may indicate that the individual purchasing agent rather than a buying group may make the vendor selection decision. Based on data gathered from industrial buyers randomly selected from a national list and using the hypothetical scenario data-gathering technique, the major findings are that individual decisions seem to predominate in modified rebuy vendor selection decisions, that loyalty to existing suppliers seems to have an effect on the extent of individual decision making, and that the extent of joint and individual decision making appears to be related to the size of the firm.     

Countervailing effects of value and risk perceptions in manufacturers' adoption of expensive,discontinuous innovations

Both value and risk perceptions are germane to industrial firms' adoption decisions involving discontinuous innovations. Yet a surprisingly limited number of studies examine how these two considerations jointly influence the innovation adoption phenomenon. We intend to fill this gap by studying the countervailing and context-dependent effects of value and risk perceptions on industrial firms' intention to adopt discontinuous innovations.A conceptual model is proposed and tested with data collected from influential decision makers in pharmaceutical manufacturers on their decision to adopt the modular facility technology, a costly, discontinuous facility construction innovation. The findings confirm the offsetting roles of value and risk in affecting adoption and reveal the moderating effects of external market pressure in that both value and risk assume greater roles in affecting adoption as external market pressure increases. Furthermore, our results show a positive effect of external market pressure on value, and negative effects of external market pressure and internal adoption readiness on risk.Our study contributes to the innovation diffusion and industrial marketing literatures by: (1) studying the joint and countervailing effects of value and risk perceptions on adoption decisions by manufacturers, (2) considering the contextual influences on industrial adopters' value and risk perceptions, and (3) gathering data from influential decision makers for a major capital investment decision.     

Breakeven analysis with semifixed costs

Breakeven analysis is a commonly used tool for decision making by industrial marketers. This article examines the traditional breakeven methodology and describes a method to include semi-fixed expenses to make the tool more applicable to situations typically encountered by industrial marketing managers.     

A decision-support system for evaluating sales prospects and launch strategies for new products

New products are important elements in the success of most industrial enterprises. But they are risky and costly. In this article, we briefly review methods that are used to evaluate the likely sales level for new industrial products prior to launch. Then, we report the results of a study of industrial product diffusion, focusing on those factors associated with successful market penetration. These results led to the development of a microcomputer based marketing decision support system (MDSS) that can be used to help plan the entry strategy for a new industrial product.     

Industrial dynamics and managerial networking in an emerging market: the case of China

This study examines how industrial conditions influence the level of executives' managerial networking with decision‐makers in other entities such as buyers, suppliers, competitors, distributors, and regulators in an emerging market. Corroborating a view that social capital holds contingent value, we theorize that executives facing different industrial conditions have different levels of commitment to exploiting interpersonal ties for fulfilling organizational needs. We propose that managerial networking is influenced by exogenous industrial attributes such as structural uncertainty, sales growth, regulatory stringency, competitive pressure, and production capacity utilization. Our analysis of executives in 364 firms in China demonstrates that the level of managerial networking increases when uncertainty, regulation, and competition increase and production capacity utilization decreases. For a specific firm, the link between industrial dynamics and managerial networking is moderated by its strategic proactiveness. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An agent-based fuzzy cognitive map approach to the strategic marketing planning for industrial firms

Industrial marketing planning is a typical example of an unstructured decision making problem due to the large number of variables to consider and the uncertainty imposed on those variables. Although abundant studies identified barriers and facilitators of effective industrial marketing planning in practice, the literature still lacks practical tools and methods that marketing managers can use for the task. This paper applies fuzzy cognitive maps (FCM) to industrial marketing planning. In particular, agent based inference method is proposed to overcome dynamic relationships, time lags, and reusability issues of FCM evaluation. MACOM simulator also is developed to help marketing managers conduct what-if scenarios to see the impacts of possible changes on the variables defined in an FCM that represents industrial marketing planning problem. The simulator is applied to an industrial marketing planning problem for a global software service company in South Korea. This study has practical implication as it supports marketing managers for industrial marketing planning that has large number of variables and their cause–effect relationships. It also contributes to FCM theory by providing an agent based method for the inference of FCM. Finally, MACOM also provides academics in the industrial marketing management discipline with a tool for developing and pre-verifying a conceptual model based on qualitative knowledge of marketing practitioners.     

New replacement part buying

This article reports on buying industrial equipment in the paper manufacturing industry. An analysis of written call reports by sales representatives at 26 paper mills, and interviews with sales representatives indicated that several generalizations on industrial buying behavior for this industry are possible. Buying behavior for the equipment part describes five decision stages and five overlapping buying centers.     

Criteria for screening new industrial products

Screening new industrial product ideas—the initial GO/NO GO decision in the new product process—is a critical decision. This article reports the results of an extensive investigation into what criteria managers use in their screening decisions, and how these criteria are weighted and combined.     

An Investment Model of the Demand and Supply For Industrial Real Estate

A recent inventory of industrial building in fifty-two major metropolitan areas of the country indicates that most such space is either owner occupied or single tenant. This suggests that the production of industrial space may be modeled as a firm "investment" decision. Using the completion date of each inventoried building, we construct a time series of plant completions that moves similarly to some other national investment data. We are able to successfully estimate an "accelerator" type model of plant deliveries, driven by movements in employment and the after-tax cost of corporate capital. Our model can be used to estimate a measure of excess plant capacity in the market, and historic values of this measure do move parallel to some recent industrial vacancy data.     

Implementation of Industrial Process Innovations: Factors, Effects, and Marketing Implications

Recent research concerning industrial process innovations, such as robotics, expert systems, computer-aided design and manufacturing, and decision support systems, calls for greater focus on the early usage activities that often follow the adoption decision. These activities are called implementation. Implementation determines whether buyers realize the full benefits of industrial process innovations. Providers of industrial innovations may be interested in understanding the key factors influencing implementation and the nature of effects. Such knowledge would be useful not only in enhancing implementation but also in devising strategies to build market advantages. To address the knowledge need, we reviewed the large, fragmented body of work on implementation, which is dispersed across many disciplines, including process engineering, information technology, human resources management, and marketing. We then synthesized relevant findings, developing a conceptual framework and deriving propositions describing the effects of key factors on implementation. Finally, to demonstrate the usefulness of the integrated knowledge, we draw some marketing implications, specifically for new product development, market development, and relationship management.     

An Integrative Model of the New Product Development Process

Previous studies of new product development have identified a series of variables that are important determinants of new product success. The goal of this article is to demonstrate the nature of the complex interrelationships that exist among these variables. Roger Calantone and Anthony di Benedetto propose an integrative model of the new product decision process. They examine data gathered from a sample of industrial manufacturing companies and test their model empirically using three-stage least squares analysis. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for new product managers.     

Switching from reps to direct salespeople

The point at which it becomes desirable for a firm to switch from a manufacturer's representative to a company's direct sales organization is a difficult one to determine for industrial marketers. This article discusses a method that can be utilized to make this decision.     

Dimensions of the public affairs/government relations function in major American corporations

The public affairs/government relations (PA/GR) function appears to be growing in importance in large corporations. A survey of the 500 largest U.S. industrial concerns was undertaken to ascertain their views and practices with regard to the PA/GR function. 130 of the 163 firms responding to the survey have a formalized PA/GR function in place. Survey data supports the idea that top corporate decision makers are allocating significant staff and decision making authority to the PA/GR function and that this activity differs significantly from the traditional lobbying and public affairs activities of the past.