Major Influences on Business Buyers
Business buyers are subject to various influences when they make their buying decisions. Some marketers suppose that the major influences are economic. They think buyers will favour supplier who offers the lowest price or the most service or the best product. They concentrate on offering strong economic profit to buyers. However, business buyers in fact respond to economic and personal factors both. Far from being cold, by calculating, and impersonal, business buyers are social and human as well. They react to reason and emotion both.
Nowadays, most business-to-business marketers identify that emotion plays vital role in business buying decisions. When suppliers' offers are very same, business buyers have little basis for strictly rational option. Because they may meet organizational goals with any, buyers, supplier can permit personal factors to play a big role in their decisions. However, when competing products differ highly, business buyers are more accountable for their option and tend to pay more notice to economic factors. Given figure lists many groups of influences on business buyers:- organizational, environmental, interpersonal, and individual.
Main Influences on Business Buyers
Business buyers are influenced heavily by factors in current and expected economic environment, like the economic outlook, the level of primary demand, and the cost of money. As economic uncertainty rises, business buyers cut back on a new investments and effort to reduce their inventories.
An increasingly significant environmental factor is shortages in key materials. Various companies now are more willing to buy and hold high inventories of scarce materials to ensure adequate supply. Business buyers also are affected by political, technological and competitive developments in environment. Customs and Culture can strongly influence business buyer reactions to marketer's behaviour and strategy, especially in international marketing environment. The business marketer has to watch these factors, find out how they will affect the buyer, and attempt to turn these challenges into opportunities.
Each buying organization has its own policies, objectives, procedures, structure, and systems. The business marketer has to know these organizational factors as thoroughly as possible. Questions like these arise: How many people are involved in buying decision? Who are they people? What are their evaluative criteria? What are company's policies and restriction on its buyers?
The buying centre typically includes various participants who influence each other. The business marketer frequently finds it hard to determine what kinds of interpersonal factors and group dynamics enter into buying process. Participants can have influence in the buying decision because they control punishments and rewards, are well liked, have special expertise, or have a special relationship with other significant participants. Interpersonal factors are frequently very subtle. Whenever possible, business marketers have to try to understand these factors and design strategies that take them into account.
Each participant in business buying decision procedure brings in personal motives, perceptions, and preferences. These specific factors are affected by personal characteristics like income, age, professional identification, education, personality, and attitudes toward risk. Also, buyers have different type buying styles. Some can be technical types who make in-depth analyses of competitive proposals before selecting a supplier. Other buyers can be intuitive negotiators who are adept at pitting sellers against one another for best deal.