Segmenting Industrial Markets by Buyer Sophistication

Abstract

Proposes that the main objective here is a system being developed for segmenting industrial markets on the basis of the level demonstrated by buying centre members. Examines the factors which influence the individual member of the buying centre in the context of his/her participating in the acquisition of an innovation. Explores the concept of consumer creativity or maturity as developed in the context of consumer marketing, and considers factors which are deemed influential. Posits that greater success rates in new product development would be achieved if research and development worked in tandem with an identified cross‐section of sophisticated buying centre members.

Understanding Consumer’s Responses to Enterprise’s Ethical Behaviors: An Investigation in China

“…Webster (1975) and Muncy and Vitell (1992) believed that consumers were increasingly willing to consider the influence of their private consumption behavior on social ethics and to make attempts to bring social change through their purchasing behavior. The awareness of consumers of their rights and the appeal of product ethics become increasingly stronger as consumers obtain more information and their educational level increases (Hirschman 1980;Barnes and McTavish 1983). The interview results also show that the ethical awareness of the consumer is an important factor affecting his/her ethical response.…”

Consumer advisors revisited: What drives those with market mavenism and opinion leadership tendencies and why?

“…Their knowledge and potential information handling skills give them the capability to form realistic expectations about consumption objects and actions. This makes them less likely to encounter negative results and dissatisfaction from consumption decisions (Barnes and McTavish, 1983). However, since opinion leaders are more likely to have more domain-specific product knowledge, they should experience higher levels of satisfaction than market mavens.…”

Purchasing/supply chain management flexibility: Moving to an entrepreneurial skill set

“…Cluster analysis is used for the purpose of examining the profiles of our sampled buyers; to ensure that we have only two main categories of buyers-less and more entrepreneurial buyers-as suggested by the use of the 70% cut-off point in the previous section. The cluster analysis technique was used by several authors (e.g., Barnes & McTavish, 1983;Faes et al, 2001) to investigate whether a number of different profiles were reflected in the dataset. We combined a hierarchical analysis to arrive at a final solution (Faes et al, 2001;Hair et al, 1998).…”