Content uploaded by Jagdish N. Sheth
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Jagdish N. Sheth
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
Organizational buying behavior: Past performance and future expectations
Abstract
Reviews the academic research conducted on organizational buying behavior since the publication of Sheth’s model of industrial buying behavior in 1973. Discovers an impressive amount of research primarily focused on the decision-making process, environmental influences and conflict resolution in joint decisions. Also, there is an emerging area of research on supply-chain partnering and the use of information technology such as networked computing and online data services. States that there is a surplus of empirical studies using descriptive methods and that more analytical approaches on the one hand, and conceptual constructs on the other. Focusses on future academic research in organizational buying behavior. Concludes that purchasing function is dramatically shifting from the transaction-oriented to the relational-oriented philosophy, and it is also shifting from domestic to global sourcing. This will change the role, processes and strategies of procurement and, therefore, new research opportunities will emerge for academic scholars. These include understanding suppliers as customers; cross-functional supplier teaming; economic value of supplier equity; supply experience curves; hub and spoke organization; bonding with suppliers; global sourcing processes; cross-cultural values in purchasing; cross-national rules and regulations; and service procurement.
... Individual obligations, gratitude and trust are more likely to develop when a social exchange occurs. For example, employees take care of their customers, which benefits both the firm and the employees (Houston et al., 1992;Sheth, 1996). Each party voluntarily participates in the social exchange with the expectation of receiving personal benefits that they would not be able to obtain on their own (van Tonder et al., 2018). ...
... This kind of research do not have the objective to search for the objective and utter true. The qualitative research is rooted in the phenomenology paradigm that sustain the reality that is build trough individuals and collective definitions -conceiving the man as a subject and actor, and as one of the assumptions is the study of the mankind is the study of moral actors, it means, people act based in your own values and dispositions (Santos Filho, 2013). As the focus of this article is to develop a perspective from the participants, interviews were strongly built with this objective, as a tool to the qualitative methodology and showing specially the internal and reflexive investigation process and the production of meaning trough the interviewer optic. ...
Development of purchasing research has shown important advances in recent decades in the international community. Nevertheless, there are obstacles limiting the impact in Brazil, such as: (i) working conditions environment; (ii) low interaction among other researchers and organization´s demands as well; (iii) lack of commitment and training. This study carried out a qualitative and interpretative, through semi-structured interviews with 3 (three) master's students, with background in purchasing as well. Their personal experiences were the focus and the object of the study. The results indicated the presence of researchers in the corporate environment, contributed to the identification of relevant topics and provide a way around obstacles.
... This sequential buying process indicates a comprehensive series of decision-making stages (Grewal et al., 2015). Again, this model has stimulated a significant amount of further research (Sheth, 1996). It is likely that as the retail business environment changes, an update to the Buy Grid, ...
... The Sheth model suggests that a combination of psychological, marketing, and social factors impact the buying preference of organizations in a logical order (Sheth, 1996). Three levels of buyer's decision-making, which are extensive problem solving, limited problem solving, and routinized problem solving, are identified. ...
Despite growing interest in business-to-business branding, there is limited understanding of how B2B brands impact organizational buying decisions in fast-emerging African markets. To address this omission, this study attempts to investigate the role and significance of B2B supplier brands in emerging African economies. Using a qualitative inquiry, we conducted interviews with business-to-business buyers across various sectors of the Nigerian economy. Leveraging insights from these buyers, we offer a comparative analysis of the role of B2B buying practices in African and Western markets and provide a grounded model addressing the role of B2B brands in organizational buying behavior. Findings indicate that the direct role of brands in business-to-business buying is contingent on several factors, including the supplier’s branding strategy, the foreignness or localness of the brand, features of the brand as well as an evaluative process of purchase considerations. Our findings provide a deeper understanding into how brand value is perceived by Nigerian buyers, consequently setting the foundation for suppliers to better comprehend buyers in emerging African markets.
... Individual obligations, gratitude and trust are more likely to develop when a social exchange occurs. For example, employees take care of their customers, which benefits both the firm and the employees (Houston et al., 1992;Sheth, 1996). Each party voluntarily participates in the social exchange with the expectation of receiving personal benefits that they would not be able to obtain on their own (van Tonder et al., 2018). ...
Purpose
Based upon social exchange theory, this study investigates the mediating effect of consumers' trust in banking industry frontline employees on two relationships: (1) the relation between consumers' perceptions of frontline employees' empathy and consumers' perceptions of frontline employees' performance, and (2) the relation between consumers' perception of frontline employees' customer orientation and consumers' perceptions of frontline employees' performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used a time-lag research design to collect data through online questionnaires distributed in two waves. The sample comprises 375 respondents having experience and interaction with banking frontline employees.
Findings
Results confirm the mediating effect of consumers' trust in the banking industry on the relationships between their perceptions of frontline employees' empathy and consumer orientation on the one hand and their perceptions of frontline employees' performance on the other hand.
Practical implications
Results may be helpful to policymakers and managers in the service industries, prompting them to adopt approaches and strategies designed to build strong relationships with consumers, thus increasing consumers' trust and frontline employees' performance.
Originality/value
This study confirms the relevance of social exchange theory in understanding the role of consumers' trust and perceptions of frontline employees' empathy and consumer orientation in understanding their perception of frontline employee performance in the banking industry.
This study employed a quantitative approach to investigate the influence of visual merchandising practices on customer engagement and purchase behavior in retail stores in Claver, Surigao del Norte. By utilizing a descriptive survey design with 385 customer respondents, the findings revealed that retailers inconsistently observed visual merchandising practices. Despite this, the study identified a significant and high positive influence of these practices on customer engagement and purchase behavior. Notably, through multiple regression analysis, it was found that only window displays significantly predicted both customer engagement and purchase behavior, although the collective influence of visual merchandising practices remained substantial. In essence, the research emphasized the integral role of visual merchandising in encouraging customer engagement and guiding their purchase behavior, highlighting the specific relevance of window displays in this retail context.
This book considers the nature, causes, and consequences of extreme pro- and anti-sustainability rhetoric, exploring how and why the expressions of radical views on sustainability-related themes may prevent real sustainable development. Following a thorough introduction on sustainability rhetoric, on dialogue, and on the role played by ideologies in the building of environmental beliefs, Fracarolli Nunes and Lee Park examine positions and statements expressed or made by individuals, companies, governments, and NGOs in the last decades. The outcomes of these considerations lead to the classification of expressions in different categories of sustainability rhetoric, laying the groundwork for the development of a ‘sustainability spectrum’: a metric for the level of radicalization of sustainability positions, which ranges from apocalyptic views to ultimate denial. Through the combination of historical perspectives, theoretical frameworks, and conceptual developments, this book provides a foundation for a more informed and productive dialogue between radically opposing views on sustainability issues. This volume will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners researching and working in the areas of environmental communication and media, environmental politics, and sustainable development.
The paper develops the first structural model of organizational buying to study innovation diffusion in a B2B market. Our model is particularly applicable for routinized exchange relationships, whereby centralized buyers periodically evaluate and choose contracts, then downstream users order items on contracted terms. The model captures different utility tradeoffs for users and buyers while accounting for how buyer and user choices interact to impact user adoption/usage and buyer contracting. Further, the paper considers the dynamics induced by share of wallet (SOW) pricing contracts, commonly used in B2B markets to reward customer loyalty with discounts for buying more than a threshold share from a supplier. We assemble novel panel data on surgeon usage, SOW contracts, contract switching, and hospital characteristics. We find two segments of hospitals in terms of the relative power of surgeons and buyers: a buyer-centric and a surgeon-centric segment. Further, innovations diffuse faster in teaching hospitals and when surgeries are concentrated among a few surgeons. Finally, we answer such questions as: Should the marketer focus on push (buyer-focused) or pull (user-focused) strategies? Do SOW contracts hurt the innovations of smaller firms? Surprisingly, we find that the contracts can help speed the diffusion of major innovations from smaller players.
Recent trends in industrial markets indicate that buyers and sellers are increasingly supplanting conventional “arm's length” arrangements with “alliances” involving closer ties. The authors develop a theoretical model of industrial buyer-supplier ties that presents joint action as a key aspect of closeness. Whereas conventional ties emphasize a clearly defined division of labor, these newer relationships are distinguished by more tightly integrated roles based on undertaking activities jointly. Drawing primarily on a normative theory of transaction costs, the authors identify the conditions under which these relationships are useful. The utility of the relationships derives from an ability to safeguard relationship-specific investments and to facilitate adaptation to uncertainty. Using data from a sample of industrial firms and their suppliers, the authors test these predictions. The results show good support for the model. Consequences for research and practice in marketing are drawn.
A substantial body of literature in operations management has emphasized the importance of establishing “Just‐in‐Time” (JIT) purchasing with suppliers in order to reduce inventory levels, reduce inspection and produce better products. This issue is paralleled in resource dependence theory, which predicts how organizations respond to uncertainty within their external environment. The current research proposes a model which uses resource dependence to explain how and why purchasing is moving towards JIT, thereby bridging the fields of operations management and organization theory. The model proposes that supply base reduction is a response to increased uncertainty in demand and that JIT is preceded by greater information sharing with fewer suppliers. Further, the success of JIT purchasing systems is sustained through reduced transaction uncertainty with critical suppliers. These hypotheses are embodied in a path analysis model, which is tested for the existence of causal linkages between the constructs. The path model was tested using data collected from interviews with production, purchasing and engineering personnel at forty Make‐to‐Order manufacturing facilities. The results of the study support the idea that purchasing departments in Make‐to‐Order firms are likely to reduce the number of critical suppliers in response to uncertainty in demand. Further, evidence of the relationship between information sharing and supply base reduction was established and information sharing was shown to be an antecedent to JIT purchasing. The hypothesis that supply base reduction is an antecedent to JIT was not supported. However, the results suggest that the two policies are complementary, in that a coordinated program of both JIT purchasing and supply base consolidation can lead to significant reductions in transaction uncertainty
Despite recent attention to organizational issues in the management of advertising, sales, new product development, and channels, there has been little empirical study of the management of the marketing research function. The study reported complements earlier work on the use of marketing information in consumer goods businesses by examining factors seen as affecting the use of marketing information in industrial firms.
Though the concept of a multiperson decision making unit (DMU) has been widely accepted in principle, very few empirical studies have surveyed all members of the DMU. In those few studies which have surveyed multiple decision participants, data were collected via “snowball” personal interviews. In a single-stage snowball a known member of the DMU is asked to provide a list of other persons involved in the decision making process. That list is used for a subsequent study. Multiple-stage snowballing involves asking all of the respondents in the first stage who else was in the DMU, then those in the second stage, and so on. Exhaustive snowballing involves continuing the process until no new DMU members are generated. As snowball personal interveiws are an extremely expensive method of collecting data, large-scale DMU research has been financially impractical for most empirical studies. A study of 319 DMUs was designed to assess the feasibility of snowballing by telephone and to ascertain the impact of exhaustive versus single-stage snowballing on the nature of the resultant DMU.
The authors report findings bearing on the reliability of measures used in industrial marketing research surveys to identify the structure of buying groups. Results obtained in a pilot study of the purchase of lithographic plates by small printing firms reveal a lack of consensus about purchase influence between pairs of informants from the same organizations. Further, the ratings appear to differentiate among roles but not stages in the decision process.
Marketing theory and practice have focused persistently on exchange between buyers and sellers. Unfortunately, most of the research and too many of the marketing strategies treat buyer-seller exchanges as discrete events, not as ongoing relationships. The authors describe a framework for developing buyer-seller relationships that affords a vantage point for formulating marketing strategy and for stimulating new research directions.
The authors develop new measures of influence strategies in marketing channels (i.e., the means by which a firm's personnel communicate with its partners to affect their behavior) in order to examine associations with the strength of buyer-seller relationships (relationalism) and alternative governance structures (market, administered, franchise, and corporate). Study 1 was a field test of the new multi-item measure of influence strategies in a contractual channel system. The results confirm the predicted negative association between relationalism and the following influence strategies: threats, legalistic pleas, and requests. Study 2 replicated tests of the psychometric quality of the scales in all four forms of governance. The results show that (1) the frequency of recommendations, promises, and information exchange is associated positively with a global measure of relationalism and (2) the frequency of almost all supplier communications differs across the four governance structures.
Research perspectives from role theory are examined with a large sample of purchasing professionals in an effort to increase understanding of industrial buyer behavior and the buying environment. An integrative model of the antecedents and consequences of role stress fits the data well. The results suggest that an awareness of the nature and influence of role stress in the buying context can be of value to marketing professionals, especially sales representatives and marketing/product managers.
The Robinson, Faris, and Wind buyclass framework has been called one of the most useful concepts in organizational buyer behavior, yet the entire model has received little empirical attention. Part of the explanation is the difficulty of obtaining valid data from members of the buying center. The authors study the buyclass framework using a novel approach: querying the managers of salesforces about the behavior their salespeople encounter on the part of their industrial customers. In phase 1, model development, the authors study the model's applicability in a relatively homogeneous, controlled setting (one industry, few firms). In phase 2, model replication, they extend and validate the phase 1 findings using multiple firms and industries. Much of what salespeople observe is found to correspond closely to the buyclass theory of organizational buyer behavior. Also, the “problem newness” and “information needs” dimensions are found to be strongly related, as expected. However, “seriousness of consideration of alternatives” seems to be a separate dimension that does not operate entirely as predicted by the buyclass framework.
Previous research on buyer behavior in high technology markets has focused on specific outcomes (product adoption or rejection) as opposed to buyers’ underlying processes. The authors identify key dimensions of high technology markets and draw on organization theory and information economics to develop hypotheses about their effects on organizational buyers’ search behavior. They also present propositions about how certain aspects of a firm's present buying situation may influence its perceptions of the characteristics of a given market. An empirical test of the propositions in a sample of computer workstation purchases shows good support for the hypothesized relationships.