B2b Buying Decision Process

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Due to long delivery times, expensiveness of the product, extensive project manage-ment, and the complexity of the product, relationships in the complex systems industry are more significant than in the traditional B2B context. The sheer amount of time and number of interactions between the supplier and the customer build the relationships unto a new level. The need for different kinds of engineers, architects, salesmen, buyers and project managers increase the amount of interactions and complexity of the rela-tionship. In this thesis, a B2B relationship is defined as the series of human connections between a supplier and a customer company, which are formed by all associated per-sonnel from both parties. The complex systems industry, on the…show more content…
(1993) see the first two phases in a more detailed light. Quigley et al. (1993) see the B2B buying deci-sion process as four phases represented in Figure 4. Quigley et al. (1993) argue that in order to optimize a company’s selling strategy, an understanding of the information that buyers use in the buying decision process is necessary. As mentioned before, several people are typically involved in a B2B relationship. Ac-cording to Clow and Baack (2005), five roles played by individuals in the customer firm exist in the buying decision process. An individual may hold more than one role. The roles are: • users •…show more content…
91), from the cognitive perspective, a customer will evaluate a buying situation on the basis of “whether past, present or imagined future experiences are valuable for them”. The customer is assumed to be informed enough to make an assessment on the pros and cons of buying a product or starting a relationship. The experiential perspective, on the other hand, sees the buying situation from a broader perspective: factors such as feelings, fun and fantasies are entered into the equation. Johnston and Kong (2011, p. 8) add that the experience will lead to the customer feeling emotions such as happiness, sadness, love, anger or shame. According to Shaw et al. (2010), over 50 per cent of the customer experience is about emotions. The emotional side of the individuals in the customer companies should therefore be taken more into account in the B2B
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