The purchase of components: Functional areas of influence

The Webster and Wind model of organizational buyer behavior enjoys considerable popularity. However, not all of its constructs and relationships among constructs have been validated by empirical research. The purpose of this study was to provide empirical evidence concerning the relationships between three of the model's critical constructs: buying center membership, purchase situation, and purchase phase. The relationships studied were variations in the perceived relative influence of different functional areas (e.g., production, marketing, purchasing, etc.) across three purchase situations and four purchase phases. The results of the study clearly indicate that the functional areas are generally perceived to have varying amounts of influence across both the purchase situation and purchase phase. These results have specific implications for developing effective industrial marketing strategies.     

Bases of power in organizational buying decisions

Managers developing industrial marketing strategy need information about the internal relationships among the key participants in an organizational buying center. This is particularly important in identifying the expected informal or nontask determinants in an organization's decision to buy. In this study, selected bases of power that tend to shape interpersonal influence processes in organizational buying centers are assessed for three key buying center participants in a new task purchase situation. The findings reveal the relative importance of selected bases of power, and differences in these relative importances by organizational position. The implications of these findings for the development of industrial marketing strategy are discussed.     

An experimental approach to segmenting buyers of marketing research

Successful industrial market segmentation may often depend on the marketer's ability to identify key characteristics influencing purchase preferences. Environmental, organizational, and personal factors are all potential determinants of buyer response patterns. Recent attention to microsegmentation processes has focused interest on personal level factors and how these are modified by organizational and situational variables. Utilizing a simulated buying experiment, this study explores a simplified approach to microsegmentation that emphasizes information readily available to industrial vendor representatives.     

How valid is the buy-grid model?

The purpose of this paper was to test the effects of product type and purchase experience on industrial buyer behavior. The research was conducted in the commercial construction industry. The findings indicate that product type is a meaningful variable which is related to industrial buyer behavior; however, the purchase experience variable or buyclass variable is not significantly related to buyer behavior as measured in this study.     

Vendor selection and the buying process

This paper reports the results of a study dealing with the vendor selection process in organizational buying. Purchasing managers in two different types of organizations assessed the importance of vendor attributes and buyer information sources in connection with two different buying tasks. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed in connection with: (1) the relative importance of vendor attributes and buyer information sources; and (2) the influence that different buying tasks and different buying organizations have on the importance of vendor attributes and information sources.     

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.     

What factors influence buying center brand sensitivity?

Building on information processing theory (IPT), this empirical study investigates the factors that drive a buying center's level of sensitivity to brand information. The authors propose that buying center brand sensitivity is related in a curvilinear fashion with purchase importance and purchase complexity, and that these relationships are moderated by several environmental, firm, and product factors. Data provided by 273 organizational buying center members confirm the presence of an inverse U-shaped relationship between purchase importance and brand sensitivity, strengthened in conditions of high brand presence and high end-customer demand. Purchase complexity and brand sensitivity appear to relate in a U-shaped fashion but only in light of the moderating effects of product tangibility. The relationship between purchase complexity and brand sensitivity appears stronger when buying firms are small and have prior contractual ties with their selling partners. These results offer guidance to managers concerning when business-to-business (B2B) brand investments are likely to offer their greatest return.     

Purchasing's role in computer buying: A comparative study

The sale of Electronic Data Processing (EDP) equipment represents a large and growing market both in number of dollars and products. This article analyzes the purchaser's perceived role in the EDP acquisition process from both public and private sector perspectives. Major public and private sector purchasing differences are discussed in terms of their implications for improving EDP marketing success. Differences discussed include: purchaser influence in the EDP decision process, necessity of seller-buyer interface, method of purchase, and purchasing's organization structure for buying EDP equipment.     

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.     

Identifying buying influences for a professional service: Implications for marketing efforts

This study analyzes the structure of a buying center for a professional service—CPA services. The results suggest CPA buying centers are similar in size and in the number of levels of corporate hierachy and functional areas involved to buying centers for other industrial services. Various buying firm characteristics (size, amount of audit fee, presence of an audit committee) were associated with differences in CPA buying center structure. The relationship of the results to prior industrial marketing research and their implications for marketing CPA services are discussed.     

The origins of power in buyer–seller relationships

Who, or what, holds power in business-to-business buyer–seller relationships is a debate at the heart of power theory. Power in buyer–seller relationships is variously seen as the property of organizations, individuals or relationships yet to be theoretically valid and useful to management, integration of these schools of thought needs to be operationalized. This paper opens up future research avenues through identifying how buyers and sellers understand the origins of power and the nature of self perceived and countervailing power. The paper presents results from 10 focus groups of both buyers and sellers revealing the underlying origins of experienced power. The results support the proposition that power in buyer–seller relationships is a pluralistic concept and that extant theories focused on organizational, individual or relational elements of power are independently too narrow in their reflections of the power construct; rather, they are all part of the same broad construct.     

Leadership, the buying center, and supply chain performance: A study of linked users, buyers, and suppliers

With conceptual foundations taken from leadership theory and the resource-based view (RBV), this study examines the influence of transactional and transformational leadership on the relationship between the value of the corporate buying center and performance in supply chains. The sample consists of 58 directly linked and matched supply chains, each composed of one user (internal customer), one corporate buyer, and one external supplier. The results indicate that transformational leadership has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between the value of the corporate buying center and performance, while transactional leadership negatively moderates this relationship. Two “localness” dimensions (formalization and centralization) and two “openness” dimensions (participative and reflective) were included as controls in the analysis.     

Service procurement in manufacturing companies: Results of three embedded case studies

An increasing part of companies' purchasing expenditures is being spent on (business) services. At the same time, the interactive character of business services has so far largely been neglected in purchasing and supply management studies. The success of a service purchase is however established during the ongoing production and consumption of that service, which takes place in continuous interaction between buyer and seller.This paper investigates these ongoing interactive processes between buyer and seller after the purchase decision has been made. The specific focus is on services buying by manufacturers, since manufacturers' services spend increasingly encompasses services that eventually become part of the final offering to customers. This is expected to pose specific challenges for manufacturing companies, who have traditionally been involved with purchasing goods.Case studies into ongoing buyer-seller interaction are conducted at three manufacturing companies. Starting from a usage-based classification which contains four types of business services, four services are studied at each manufacturing company. The results show that indeed the different types of services can be associated with distinct patterns of ongoing interaction. Furthermore, the results provide initial support for the idea that having differentiated patterns of interaction contributes to successful ongoing service exchange.     

Customer response to dissatisfaction: A synthesis of literature and conceptual framework

Business-to-business customers who are dissatisfied with services or products may respond by voicing complaints, by exiting the transaction relationships, by spreading negative word-of-mouth (WOM) about their experiences, and/or by continuing the transactional relationships as they are. The authors synthesize extant customer (dis)satisfaction response behaviors in the organizational buyer behavior literature, and discuss within-firm and third-party recipients of voicing and negative WOM. A model of customer response behavior is disclosed featuring possible influences of exit, voice, loyalty, and negative WOM: number of alternative suppliers, past complaint response behavior, number of years in relationship, and type of purchase. Propositions are provided on the effects of influence variables on response behavior relationships.     

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.     

Coalitions in organizational buying

It has been argued that many, if not most, organizational buying decisions are made not by individuals, but by coalitions. At the same time, coalition formation has been all but ignored in theoretical and empirical research on the buying process. This article discusses the nature of coalitions and their likelihood in industrial buying. Managerial implications of the presence of coalitions are drawn for both the industrial buying and selling organization.     

Purchase process for capital equipment and services

This article develops some interactive dimensions of the industrial buying center. Buying group processes and outcomes were examined for purchases of capital equipment and industrial services in 31 firms. Qualitative as well as quantitative data were analyzed to test the soundness of an interactive communication perspective on buying, and the managerial implications to be drawn from such an analysis. Equipment and services purchase measures were found to differ reliably across several indices suggested by our theoretical orientation.     

Buying in a matrix organization

A study of 32 purchase situations within a large research organization organized under a matrix form confirmed that members from both functional and project groups were participants in the buying center. Another finding was that the influence of buying center members across five stages of the purchase process remains the same. Significant differences in influence were found however, among the different functions with program representatives having a greater influence than project ones.     

Incumbent and non-incumbent salesperson consultation in the pre-decision stage of organizational purchasing

Given the complexity (e.g., digitization, customization, and scale) of modern business solutions, salespeople increasingly seek to influence the pre-planning stages of buyer decision making to increase effectiveness. During the early stage of organizational buying, salespeople can align their firm's capabilities and expertise by offering input on problem definition, before a solution is sought. However, surprisingly little is known about the role of salespeople in the period before a buying firm decides to officially address a problem and seek vendor solutions. Thus, our research focuses on the inclusion of both incumbent salespeople (strong ties to the buying organization) and non-incumbent salespeople (limited, or non-existent, ties to the buying organization) in pre-decision phase information sourcing of buyers. Drawing upon theory from social network and problem solving literatures, we develop a contingency model to illustrate pre-decision phase conditions based on problem framing, structure, and urgency that make incumbent or non-incumbent salespeople more likely to be sources of information. We test our hypotheses across a series of scenario-based experimental studies conducted with purchasing managers. Our findings suggest situations where incumbent and non-incumbent salespeople have a greater likelihood of being positioned to engage in pre-decision stage planning with customers.