Business to Business - Buying Behavior

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 1,3, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, language: English, abstract: Selling and buying behavior in business to business markets has rapidly changed over the past decades as markets become more competitive, technology evolves fast and customer expectations have changed. Thus, the focus changed from the buyer or seller to being the sole individual responsible for handling business relationships. Nowadays, everybody in a company who can provide an input to the process is actively involved as the boundaries of different horizontal and vertical levels are fading which used to determine the scope of responsibility in the past. Therefore, the general terms of 'Buying Center' and 'Selling Center' have become important as they define the people being involved in a purchase. The aim of this dissertation is to provide an overview of the significant determinants of a buying and a selling center, the roles the individuals play in a purchase and the influences on buying and selling behavior on different levels. Additionally, the buying and selling process and the collaboration of the respective centers in the process are being considered. The first chapter focuses on the major changes of selling and buying in the past decades. Chapter three provides the general definitions of B2B markets, the goods being purchased and the terms of buying and selling centers. In addition, the major characteristics that determine a buying situation are being described. In the subsequent chapters, buying and selling behavior is being analyzed separately. Hence, chapter four outlines the roles in a buying center and analyzes who is likely to occupy these roles. After that, a model of the buying decision process is established to illustrate who is involved at which stage. With the purpose of surveying the preliminarily established assumptions of buying behavior, an interview with a buyer is conducted. At the end of the fourth chapter, the findings are summarized and implications for further research are provided. The fifth chapter elaborates the selling side of a purchase. Implications from the fourth chapter are included as the roles of the selling center and the seller's decision process are depicted. Subsequently, analogue to the previous chapter, theory is revised on the base of an interview with a selling agent. In the sixth chapter the two sides of a purchase and their members are considered jointly. Concluding, the key findings are outlined, implications for the management are evolved and recommendations for potential future research are made.