A General Model for Understanding Organizational Buying Behavior

I ndustrial and institutional marketers have often been urged to base their strategies on careful appraisal of buying behavior within key accounts and in principal market segments. When they search the available literature on buyer behavior, however, they find virtually exclusive emphasis on consumers, not industrial buyers. Research findings and theoretical discussions about consumer behavior often have little relevance for the industrial marketer. This is due to several important differences between the two purchase processes. Industrial buying takes place in the context of a formal organization infiuenced by a budget, cost and profit considerations. Furthermore, organizational (i.e., industrial and institutional) buying usually involves many people in the decision process with complex interactions among people and among individual and organizational goals. The industrial marketer could find a. model of buyer behavior useful in identifying those key factors influencing response to marketing effort. It can help the marketer analyze available information about the market and identify the