Buying Center

When shopping or body english buying center of a company or organization is a group of people is called, who is involved in a purchase decision. This group is made up mostly of representatives from various departments and functions together, with the aim to optimize the result of the decision by shared knowledge and experience. This is a buying center a possible manifestation of organizational buying behavior.

For example, belong to a buying center members of the department, which is to use the procured product, technicians who are responsible for the care, employees from the Finance / Controlling who watch over the financing of the costs, as well as experts from the purchasing department, the bring legal knowledge about contracts to be concluded.

The following roles ( persons with mandate ) within a buying center can be distinguished, inter alia:

User (User ), eg production staff / manager, user
Purchaser ( Buyer), get bids and assess them, such as procurement staff / line
Influencers ( Influencer ), influenced the decision-making process, sets standards, for example, consultants, vendors, designers
Decision-makers ( Decider ), final decision, mostly management, authorized representatives, decision-makers.

Here, a person can assume multiple roles and a role may be represented by more than one person.

The following functions (people who act autonomously ) also can be distinguished:

Initiator, stimulates the initial purchase
Coach, often external advisory role, with very close contact to an employee
Infoselektierer ( gatekeeper ), information is more or holds them back.

The roles in the buying center can be their work by also associated with the various stages of procurement, see the following table:

The three main questions regarding the buying center are:

What decision criteria are the most important for each role?
What is the weight the individual role in the final decision?
How do the roles behave in conflict situations and what situations are they?

As members of the buying center can pursue incompatible intentions, a consideration of group dynamics is helpful to organize a targeted approach can. Ways to deal with such conflicts are:

The trend can be observed that the buying center decisions are complex and intense when it is for instance is a new supplier or a new product ("New Task " in accordance with Webster / wind) when the product with high investment or risk associated for the company or if key positions are occupied by new personnel.

On the seller side to a selling center is used often in contrast, whose members can provide all the necessary information about the product.