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Jagdish N. Sheth: Kellstadt Professor of Marketing at Goizueta Business School, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Introduction
The purpose of this invited paper is to assess what has happened since the publication of the paper, "A model of industrial buyer behavior" (Sheth, 1973), and to suggest future academic research opportunities and challenges with respect to theory, methods and empirical observations in organizational buyer behavior (OBB).
As we all know, forecasting the future is a highly risky business, especially if you live through the future. However, I will attempt to do this one more time in this paper for two reasons: First, I probably will not be around to witness the future, and second, the best way to forecast the future is to create one! Therefore, in this paper I will "fast forward" the assessment of academic research conducted since the early 1970s and spend more time suggesting new and exciting research opportunities and challenges in inter-organization buyer behavior. In the Appendix, a detailed review of academic research of the past 25 years is provided.
Fast forward
My first exposure to, and experience with OBB was in 1962 at the University of Pittsburgh. Under the leadership of Professor John Howard, several of us doctoral students were trying to develop a descriptive model of how industrial buyers make buying decisions and supplier selection. I distinctly remember interviewing industrial buyers of steel companies in Pittsburgh about their purchase of industrial fasteners (bolts and nuts) and electrical motors. At that time, the marketing discipline had just discovered the marketing concept; and brand loyalty, retailing and mass advertising were influential in the development of marketing thought (Sheth et al. 1989). Consequently, I was surprised to discover that industrial, institutional, and trade buying behaviors were rich with empirical evidence, concepts, and methodology (Sheth, 1973, 1976).
Since the early 1980s, research on OBB has simply exploded (Ward and Webster, 1991). This can be attributed to at least three reasons. First, the shift from understanding and influencing consumers to customers(industrial, institutional, and trade) has led to a greater focus on OBB. Second, both the academic journals and business professional organizations, including the National Association of Purchasing Management (NAPM), have encouraged research and, publications on inter-organization buying behavior. Finally, as suggested in Sheth et...