The B2B Decision-making Styles Scale is a measurement instrument that determines procurement decision-making styles in the B2B (business-to-business) sector. 26 items measure seven B2B decision-making styles. The B2B Decision-making Styles Scale can be used to segment industrial markets and to evaluate the decision-making of a specific company and its buying centre regarding its procurement process.
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B2B Decision-making Styles
The seven B2B decision-making styles are characterised as follows:
- The perfectionistic and quality conscious buyer represents an organisation that constantly and deliberately searches for the best quality products, spending a considerable amount of its time and effort in due diligence and information gathering, to make educated decisions. Since these companies seek to purchase the most perfect choices, their expectations on product excellence and superiority are very high. This makes product quality the most outstanding purchase criterion used in their decision-making. This pursuit of perfectionism goes hand in hand with the company’s competitive strategies, which will only be satisfied by products that are differentiable from the rest through high quality. In this sense, only exceptional products will catch this firm’s attention, leaving fairly good offers of a lower quality out of the company ś choice spectrum.
- The confused and poorly informed buyer represents a company that is overwhelmed by the amount of information it receives from different suppliers and products, making the decision-making process difficult, slow, with a lot of hesitation, uncertainty and insecure decisions. This excess of information confuses the firm and produces doubt on to what extent each offer can satisfy the demands of the company. Additionally, this type of buyer has normally poor to none information sources, and therefore tends to rely on advertising stimuli to make decisions.
- The fast and careless buyer, unlike the perfectionistic and quality conscious buyer, does not plan the procurement process, nor invests time and effort in the buying decision. Such a company settles for the first supplier or product that appears to be sufficient. Since expectations on product performance and attributes are not very high, it makes quick and impulsive purchases. Occasionally, these thoughtless decisions present economic consequences that the firm regrets.
- The novelty and innovation seeking buyer represents a company that is very much into innovative and ground-breaking products, which play with the limits of the established technology. For this reason, its choice spectrum will only include novelty products. Such a company will direct a significant amount of its resources to purchase products within the latest trends because it is important to such a firm to maintain an up-to-date status of its inventories and portfolios.
- The habitual and loyal buyer represents a company whose buying behaviour is marked by its preference and loyalty toward its already existing suppliers. For each purchase situation, the company recurrently chooses its known and favourite suppliers because these satisfy the demands of the company fairly well. Since the company has experience with these suppliers, it has certainty that the business relationship will work, and that the products bought will meet the expectations.
- The price conscious buyer represents a company that usually tries to procure the best choice for the lowest possible price. In other words, it is interested in achieving the best value for money. Such a firm usually seeks for low prices, but does not neglect that the product still needs to provide some utility. The company dedicates resources into budgeting activities that will help to carefully plan and monitor its expenses.
- The brand and reputation conscious buyer represents a company that uses the reputation and popularity of a supplier’s brand as the main purchase criterion. Such a company considers only well-known brands in its choice spectrum and, therefore, does not spend much time or research efforts on analysing the real quality or value behind the offer. Furthermore, since the focus of such a company is set on reputation and the brand, the price is of lower relevance in the final purchase decision.