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The opportunities and costs of highly involved organizational buyers

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Abstract

This research investigates the impact of an organizational buyer’s product involvement on the customer firm’s and supplier’s financial outcomes. The results suggest that highly involved organizational buyers are willing to pay more, which benefits the supplier, but they are also perceived by the supplier as having greater expertise in negotiations, which benefits the customer. In Study 1, the authors examine the effects of buyer product involvement using a survey of organizational buyers matched with profit data from their supplier. The findings suggest that the prevailing mechanism that drives the effects of buyer product involvement is contingent upon different customer and supplier levers. Study 2 examines the theorized mechanisms via a second survey and an experiment. This research contributes to literatures on buying and negotiations by revealing the importance of considering the potential effects of a buyer’s product involvement. Suppliers can leverage a more highly involved buyer by developing strong connections with the focal product; customers should encourage their buyers to be highly involved and leverage their knowledge of the market but limit their influence within the customer firm.

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Notes

  1. We use “customer firm” and “customer” interchangeably.

  2. Although we focus on physical products, involvement also manifests with regard to services and non-tangible products (Siebert et al., 2020) in both B2C and B2B contexts.

  3. In some contexts, salespeople have the discretion to unilaterally grant discounts within some predefined range (e.g., Joseph, 2001). However, even in those contexts, salespeople often must seek approval for a discount beyond the preapproved range of discretion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Collat School of Business, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL, USA

    Colleen E. McClure

  2. Spears School of Business, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA

    Justin M. Lawrence & Todd J. Arnold

  3. Robert J. Trulaske, Sr. College of Business, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA

    Lisa K. Scheer

  4. Strategic Business-to-Business Management, University of Graz, Graz, Austria

    Lisa K. Scheer

Authors
  1. Colleen E. McClure
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  2. Justin M. Lawrence
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  3. Todd J. Arnold
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  4. Lisa K. Scheer
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Correspondence to Colleen E. McClure.

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McClure, C.E., Lawrence, J.M., Arnold, T.J. et al. The opportunities and costs of highly involved organizational buyers. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 51, 480–501 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-022-00859-6

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