Decision Making Process In B2b Marketing

1080 Words5 Pages
As mentioned earlier, a decision-making process in B2B context is more complex and time-consuming than in B2C market. Many different people with various needs and priorities (personal as well as company) are involved in the purchasing activity. Consequently, the existence of such purchasing environment may support the idea of industrial customers to be more rational than B2C consumers (Hague & Harrison, n.d.). The belief in B2B markets rationality has predominated in marketers’ minds for a comparatively long period of time. Most emphasis in marketing activities has been done on products or services functional characteristics without attention to personal values (Lynch & de Chernatony, 2004). B2B buyers were generally considered to be more…show more content…
Even though the majority of past researchers believed that B2B customers made only rational and logical decisions in business contexts and were mainly caught by a product or service functional attributes, different steps in buying situations increased the influence of emotions on people choices (Leek & Christodoulides, 2012). According to Bennett et al. (2005), customers are more likely to be careful in making decisions in high-risk situations than in environments with low risk. Consequently, buyers turn to some emotional aspects of a product or service or brand in order to induce themselves and other people, involved in the decision-making process, and decrease the level of perceived risk. For example, choosing expensive equipment for a production line, a purchasing manager will prefer to place an order to a well-known manufacturer instead of the middle-level company with no substantial differences in technical characteristics between their two products. This situation is explained by the willingness of reducing personal risks or (in other words) by the influence of emotional aspects on the choosing…show more content…
Definitely, when it comes to real competition, and products are technically comparable, emotional connections with products or a manufacturer become determinative. A quality-related product or service attribute may give only a temporary competitive advantage; thus, it is risky to rely only on tangible factors. However, Kotler & Armstrong (2001) argued that business customers paid attention to both tangible and intangible attributes of the proposal, and B2B buyers followed personal feelings in their decision making when offered products were similar, as there were no any rational arguments to choose

More about Decision Making Process In B2b Marketing

Open Document