Modeling the Buying Center Influence: Value Creation in Buyer-Seller Relationships

Abstract

There is growing recognition that buying center activities offer significant opportunity for creating value in buyer-seller relationships and stimulating account growth. Forming the nucleus of buying activity in the customer organization, sellers are increasingly faced with the need of gaining a deeper understanding of the buying center influence in shaping the nature and volume of customer transactions for strategic advantage. Since the buying center is not a “well-articulated structure” and is actually quite “fluid over time” (Fichman and Goodman 1996, p. 313), the task of the researcher is to find ways to capture the shared values of buying center members and identify the “rules of procedures” that govern on-going buyer behavior. Researchers have continued to challenge industrial marketers to base their strategies on careful appraisal of buyer behavior for account success (Webster and Wind 1972). To assist in understanding industrial buying behavior, a framework for modeling the buying center influence on account profitability is developed. Drawing from organizational theory, the proposed framework integrates the norms and values of the buying center culture with a seller legitimacy process. The model highlights the economic and social behaviors necessary to attain legitimacy with the buyer. This legitimacy process is then linked to account performance.