The Effect of Information Sources on the Success of the Organizational Buying Process

The objective of this empirical study was to investigate how the use of internal and external information sources influence the success of an organization’s buying process, and how the characteristics of the buying task influence the employment of these information sources during the buying process. Quantitative data were collected by structured interviews among Finnish business organizations early in 2008. The results suggest that the employment by an organization of information provided by a supplier during the buying process has a significant but contradictory influence on the success of the buying process. Furthermore, the complexity, newness, and importance of the buying situation were found to have a significant influence on the employment of different sources of information during the various stages of buying process. Perceived risk of the buying task was found to have no significant effect on the use of different information sources.