Buyer

Decision-making

Procurement decisions fall along a continuum from simple buying transactions to more complex buyer-supplier collaborations, and the buying behaviour of staff involved in purchasing decision-making has been widely studied. There is a consensus among scholars and marketing managers that buyers utilise various decision processes as appropriate to each buying situation, and some purchasing decisions are especially complex. Some writers treat purchasing decisions as examples of rational behaviour made in the context of a business aim such as profit maximisation and make the assumption that decision-makers have access to the information they need for their decision. Feldman and Cordozo questioned this approach in a 1969 article, suggesting that industrial buyer decision-making had similarities with consumer buying behaviour. David T. Wilson suggested in a 1971 article that an individual buyer's personality should be considered in understanding buyers' decision processes. Three distinct personality traits have been described in the literature on this subject: