Industrial Buying During Recession: Farmers' Tractor Purchases, 1977–78

Abstract

Introduction The scope and popularity of academic research into organisational buying behaviour have increased immensely during the last decade as university business schools and departments of marketing have sought to enhance the effectiveness of companies' industrial marketing programmes. Most research into industrial buying has focused on areas where there is a fairly well defined group of individuals who are responsible for decision making. Further, in many studies, it has been comparatively easy to recognise a firm's “buying centre”—the group of people who influence the outcome of particular buying decisions. A typical buying centre may consist of the buyers themselves; the users of the purchased item; influencers, whose opinions shape the buying decision, perhaps by specifying one brand rather than another; deciders, who make but do not necessarily implement decisions; and gatekeepers, who are responsible for the flow of information and ideas to those who decide. Studies of buyer behaviour in manufacturing industry have reached a high level of sophistication in their ability to unravel the complexities of such intricate phases of the capital investment process as the precise manner in which a gatekeeper's editing of information impinges on final buying decisions, especially with respect to brand choice and the selection of particular suppliers.

Citation

Foxall, G.R. (1979), "Industrial Buying During Recession: Farmers' Tractor Purchases, 1977–78", Management Decision, Vol. 17 No. 4, pp. 317-325. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb001195