Identify the major factors that influence business buyer behavior.

Business buyer behavior

At all levels, marketers want to know how business buyers will respond to their marketing strategies. See the figure:-

In this figure, we can see that marketing and other factors affect the buyers buying decisions; this produces a certain buyer response. Marketers must understand the figure.

In the organization, there is a buying center that contains two parts –

1. The buying center
2. The buying decision process

The above figure also shows that buying center & buying decision process are influenced by internal, interpersonal, organizational, external & individual factors.

Major types of buying situations

Here, we’ll discuss the three major types of buying situations.

• Straight rebuy: In the straight rebuy situation, some people regularly order products without any modifications.
• Modified rebuy:  In this situation, buyers continuously want to modify products, prices, terms & conditions, suppliers, etc.
• New task: In this situation, buyers buy a product for the first time.
• Systems selling:  To solve a problem, the buyer buys a package of solutions from a single seller.

Participants in the business buying process

Here, we can find a buying center. In this center, all the individuals & buyers take their buying decision. Even, This group also has actual users of the product & services, these people influence other people in making the buying decision.

There are five roles played by the buying center members. Have a look-

1.  Users: The actual users of the product & services.
2.  Influencers: These people help to evaluate the alternatives & define the specification.
3.  Buyers: These people help to shape the product’s specifications, and enjoy the formal authority to select suppliers.
4.  Deciders: They have formal or informal power to select final suppliers.
5.  Gatekeepers:  They have control over the information.

Major influences on business buyers

Very often business buyers are influenced by the other business buyer’s decision-making process. Maximum time economic factors influenced most. The buyers always try to find out who offers lower prices but better quality of the product. Buyers all time prefer these types of sellers. Obviously, economic factors are most important to all buyers. Not only do economic factors affect the buyers but also personal factors affect the buyers. As a social beings, business buyers also react to both reason & emotion. Today’s marketers find out that emotion plays an important role in the business buying decisions

See the below figure:

This figure shows that four factors influence business buyer behavior – environmental, organizational, interpersonal & individual. In the environmental factors, there’re six additional factors that can also affect the buyer behavior decision like the economy, supply conditions, technology, politics, competition, culture & customs.

Organizational factors are also very important because it has their own objectives, strategies, structure, systems, and procedures.

Interpersonal factors include influence, expertise, authority & dynamics.

Individual factors are age, education, job position, motivates personality, preferences & buying style.