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ABSTRACT
Buyer behavior in business markets has received much less attention than buyer behavior in consumer markets. By its very nature organizational buying behavior is complex involving a group choice decision with multiple individuals from different departments who have distinct functional skills and occupy different positions in the hierarchical structure of an organization. Understanding buyer behavior in business markets will facilitate the establishment and maintenance of interorganizational exchange relationships. We review extant models and research on buyer behavior in business markets and develop an integrative model to understand buyer behavior and help formulate strategy in business markets.
Introduction
The marketing concept's focus on buyers and their needs rather than seller needs being considered paramount spawned widespread interest in understanding buyer behavior. Models of buyer behavior were developed in order to help formulate marketing strategy by examining how buyers satisfied their needs by purchasing products. The process of recognizing a need, searching for possible solutions, and making a choice after evaluating the alternatives has to be understood and modeled in order to implement the marketing concept by selecting markets and planning products. Corey (1975) suggests that in business markets the product is a variable not a given and market selection precedes product planning. Absent an understanding of buyer behavior it is difficult to determine the characteristics to be added together to make a product capable of satisfying buyers with similar needs in a market (Sashi and Kudpi, 2001). A buyer with a need has a choice: to either make the product or buy the product from someone else who makes the product for them. If a buyer chooses to buy rather than make, then the buyer has a choice from among many alternative products from different sellers. As each product is an idiosyncratic combination of characteristics, the buyer's choice process will determine the product with the combination of characteristics that is perceived to provide the best value to the buyer.
Despite strong interest in understanding buyer behavior in consumer as well as business markets, far more progress has been made in modeling buyer behavior in consumer markets than in business markets. A recent editorial in the Journal of Marketing laments the "alarming and growing gap between the interests, standards, and priorities of academic marketers...