The Purchasing/Procurement Process 117
the customer’s site, in the role of buyer-materials planners. Massachusetts’s Bose
Corporation pioneered this arrangement with G&F Industries, its first in-plant
supplier. Says Christ Labonte, a G&F manager, “It’s a fresh, nontraditional
agreement based on trust. After people get comfortable in their partnering, they
start turning up rocks they wouldn’t have turned up and revealing causes that were
sacred cows.”^19Interpersonal Factors
Buying centers usually include several participants with differing interests, authority,
status, empathy, and persuasiveness. The business marketer is not likely to know what
kind of group dynamics take place during the buying decision process. Therefore, suc-
cessful firms strive to find out as much as possible about individual buying center par-
ticipants and their interaction and train sales personnel and others from the market-
ing organization to be more attuned to the influence of interpersonal factors.
Individual Factors
Each buyer carries personal motivations, perceptions, and preferences, as influenced
by the buyer’s age, income, education, job position, personality, attitudes toward risk,
and culture. Moreover, buyers definitely exhibit different buying styles. For example,
some younger, highly educated buyers are expert at conducting rigorous, computer-
ized analyses of competitive proposals before choosing a supplier. Other buyers are
“toughies” from the old school and pit competitors against one another.
Understanding these factors can better prepare marketers for dealing with individuals
within the buying center.
Cultural Factors
Savvy marketers carefully study the culture and customs of each country or region
where they want to sell their products, to better understand the cultural factors that
can affect buyers and the buying organization. For example, in Germany, businesspeo-
ple prefer to be introduced by their full, correct titles, and they shake hands at both
the beginning and the end of business meetings. As another example, both Korean
and Japanese businesspeople observe Confucian ethics based on respect for authority
and the primacy of the group over the individual.^20 Marketers that sell to firms in
other nations must be aware of such cultural attitudes and practices, because they per-
meate business-to-business transactions.
THE PURCHASING/PROCUREMENT PROCESS
Industrial buying passes through eight stages called buyphases,as identified by
Robinson and associates in the buygridframework shown in Table 3.4.^21 In modified-
rebuy or straight-rebuy situations, some of these stages are compressed or bypassed.
For example, in a straight-rebuy situation, the buyer normally has a favorite supplier
or a ranked list of suppliers. Thus, the supplier search and proposal solicitation stages
are skipped. In the sections that follow, we examine each of the eight stages for a typi-
cal new-task buying situation.
Stage 1: Problem Recognition
The buying process begins when someone in the company recognizes a problem or
need that can be met by acquiring a good or service. The recognition can be triggered
by internal or external stimuli. Internally, problem recognition commonly occurs
when a firm decides to develop a new product and needs new equipment and materi-