High-technology markets represent unique problems for organizational buyers and, in turn, for their existing and potential vendors. These problems are due to high levels of uncertainty and the presence of switching costs tied to existing technologies or vendors. The authors focus on two aspects of buyer decision making in such markets: (1) whether buyers include new vendors at the consideration stage of the process and (2) whether they switch to new vendors at the choice stage. Using survey data from organizational buyers’ purchases of computer workstation equipment, the authors present a joint test of the antecedent conditions that influence the two processes. Based on a sequential logit model, they show that individual antecedents have different effects on consideration and switching behavior. The authors then discuss the implications of their study for the literatures on high-technology markets and organizational buyer behavior.

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Previous research on buyer behavior in high technology markets has focused on specific outcomes (product adoption or rejection) as opposed to buyers’ underlying processes. The authors identify key dimensions of high technology markets and draw on organization theory and information economics to develop hypotheses about their effects on organizational buyers’ search behavior. They also present propositions about how certain aspects of a firm's present buying situation may influence its perceptions of the characteristics of a given market. An empirical test of the propositions in a sample of computer workstation purchases shows good support for the hypothesized relationships.

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In this paper we investigate the relationship between the level of a firm's technological innovativeness and its pattern of partnership agreements (i.e., relative number of partnership agreements of one type versus another). We argue that the protection of tacit technological knowledge from potential opportunism is of importance to technologically innovative firms, and as a result they tend to have a relatively larger number of partnership agreements which generally minimize the transfer of tacit technological knowledge. Specifically, they tend to have a greater number of marketing agreements than joint ventures and a greater number of licensing agreements than joint ventures. This argument is tested using data from manufacturing firms in the electrical and electronics machinery sector who invest in R&D, and our results hold for our focal firm's agreements with both domestic and foreign partners. We discuss the strategic and policy implications from this research. In particular, the empirical results suggest that technologically innovative firms already have relatively more agreements which are likely to preempt transfer of their tacit technological knowledge to their foreign partners. Thus, recent suggestions of more active government regulation in the area of intellectual property may be unwarranted.domestic and foreign interfirm partnership agreements, patent citations, tacit knowledge, technological innovativeness