Kendrick Raino Principles of Marketing Chapter 6 March 4, 2018
In chapter 6 the focus was on organizational customers and their buying behavior. We
began by defining business and organizational customers who are buyers who buy for resale or
to produce other goods and services. Upon reading this chapter I realized that I would not have a
lot of real world applications personally but I could easily see how a marketing manager would.
Organizations look at different factors and are not as likely to “impulse buy” as final customers
are. They typically look at things more pragmatically and look towards the bigger picture.
Organizations also use of a set of purchasing specifications which is a description of what the
firm wants to buy. The International Organization for Standardization helps with quality
management with the ISO 9000 which is a way for a supplier to document its quality procedures
according to internationally recognized standards.
We then moved on to the specialists. Purchasing managers are buying specialists for
their employers. I was actually surprised to know that there are many job opportunities in this
field, I seriously thought it was just a desk job! Even with that knowledge it is not necessarily a
one person show. Multiple buying influence means that several people play a part in making a
purchase decision. We also defined a buying center as all the people who participate in or
influence a purchase. This is a part that I took lightly at first, but the more I thought about it, the
more I saw that it could involve many people. Vendor analysis helps, it is a formal rating of
suppliers on all relevant areas of performance. The goal is to lower the total costs associated
with purchases. We also went over the potential ethical conflicts with Omnicare reference, as
well as defined a requisition, which is a request to buy something.
