Structure of the Buying Center free essay sample

In addition to all the factors studied before, our framework contains a new construct, the environmental characteristics, which has not been studied before by other researchers. Within each construct we added some new characteristics and we eliminated the duplications. Key words: buying center; purchasing management; organizational behavior. Literature review The buying center notion has been one of the most important conceptual contributions made in the study of organizational buying behavior. The concept of the buying center refers to all those members of an organization who become involved in the buying process for a particular product or service (Robinson et. al 1967). The main research streams of investigation found in literature include: buying center structure and factors that influence it; influence of members of the buying center; and communication between members of the buying center. Most researchers have studied the changes in the buying center (BC) composition and structure over the buying process and the factors that determined these changes. We will write a custom essay sample on Structure of the Buying Center or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Researchers that studied the factors that determine changes in the BC composition and structure found four main categories of factors that influence the BC structure: company specific characteristics, purchase related characteristics, participants characteristics and type of the decision. A list of all factors that have been researched and the author(s) that has/have studied them is given in Table 1. From all these characteristics, purchase or product characteristics were found to be the most influential upon the structure of the buying center.