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ANALYZING BUSINESS MARKETS | CHAPTER 7 189

actually get the business, even though others (deciders) might select two or more potential vendors
that can meet the company’s requirements.
The typical buying center has a minimum of five or six members and often has dozens. Some
may be outside the organization, such as government officials, consultants, technical advisors, and
other members of the marketing channel. One study found that 3.5 more people on average were
engaged in making a business purchase decision in 2005 than in 2001. 19

Buying Center Influences

Buying centers usually include several participants with differing interests, authority, status, and
persuasiveness, and sometimes very different decision criteria. Engineers may want to maximize
the performance of the product; production people may want ease of use and reliability of supply;
financial staff focus on the economics of the purchase; purchasing may be concerned with operat-
ing and replacement costs; union officials may emphasize safety issues.
Business buyers also have personal motivations, perceptions, and preferences influenced
by their age, income, education, job position, personality, attitudes toward risk, and culture.
Buyers definitely exhibit different buying styles. There are “keep-it-simple” buyers,“own-expert”
buyers, “want-the-best” buyers, and “want-everything-done” buyers. Some younger, highly
educated buyers are computer experts who conduct rigorous analyses of competitive proposals
before choosing a supplier. Other buyers are “toughies” from the old school who pit competing
sellers against one another, and in some companies, the purchasing powers-that-be are
legendary.
Webster cautions that ultimately individuals, not organizations, make purchasing
decisions. 20 Individuals are motivated by their own needs and perceptions in attempting to
maximize the rewards (pay, advancement, recognition, and feelings of achievement) offered by
the organization. Personal needs motivate their behavior, but organizational needs legitimate
the buying process and its outcomes. Thus, businesspeople are not buying “products.” They are
buying solutions to two problems: the organization’s economic and strategic problem, and
their own personal need for individual achievement and reward. In this sense, industrial buy-
ing decisions are both “rational” and “emotional”—they serve both the organization’s and the
individual’s needs. 21
Research by one industrial component manufacturer found that although top executives at
its small- and medium-size customers were comfortable buying from other companies, they
appeared to harbor subconscious insecurities about buying the manufacturer’s product.
Constant changes in technology had left them concerned about internal effects within the com-
pany. Recognizing this unease, the manufacturer retooled its selling approach to emphasize
more emotional appeals and how its product line actually enabled the customer’s employees to
improve their performance, relieving management of the complications and stress of using
components. 22
Recognizing these extrinsic, interpersonal influences, more industrial firms have put greater
emphasis on strengthening their corporate brand. At one time, Emerson Electric, a global
provider of power tools, compressors, electrical equipment, and engineering solutions, was a
conglomerate of 60 autonomous—and sometimes anonymous—companies. A new CMO
aligned the brands under a new global brand architecture and identity, allowing Emerson to
achieve a broader presence so it could sell locally while leveraging its global brand name. Record
23
sales and stock price highs soon followed. SAS is another firm that recognized the importance
of its corporate brand.

SAS With sales of more than $2.3 billion and a huge “fan club” of IT customers,
SAS, the business analytics software firm, seemed to be in an enviable position in 1999. Yet
its image was what one industry observer called “a geek brand.” In order to extend the
company’s reach beyond IT managers with PhDs in math or statistical analysis, the com-
pany needed to connect with C-level executives in the largest companies—the kind of
people who either didn’t have a clue what SAS’s software was and what to do with it, or who didn’t think
business analytics was a strategic issue. Working with its first outside ad agency ever, SAS emerged
®
with a new logo, a new slogan, “The Power to Know ,” and a series of TV spots and print ads in