Buying center

From ArticleWorld


Buying center is a place where in a team of employees are engaged in purchasing an items for the organization(s) of their interest.

An ad hoc team of buyers in the buying centre are well versed with the required materials and their rates, quality, availability in market, mandates, criteria and procedures.

The buying executives in the buying centre vary depending on the items they intend to purchase.

Purchases involving major items or in bulk categorically require inputs from various in-house branches within the organization, like finance and accounts, purchase and quality control, information technology management and senior managerial group.

Webster and Wind explains the complexities of the organizational buying process. A typical Buying centre plays the following roles:


[edit]

Roles

The roles played by different persons in the buying center are as:

  1. End users of the item that is being purchased by the buying center.
  2. Buyers are generally responsible for the contract buying and they make purchases from other organization or within the same organization.
  3. Influencers are people who try to influence the right outcome of decisions with their dominant decisions creating controversy in the buying centre.
  4. Deciders make final purchase decisions. Gate keepers maintain to regulate the inflow and outflow of the information in buying centers.

For example, purchases, involving highly technical items like information systems or production equipment, require the suitable expertise of technical specialists. Because of the involvement of special types of equipments or machinery, for example computer and software purchases, many relevant corporations use buying centers specific to the information technology acquisitions. These specialized buying centers keep well informed about the technologies from commercial sources, manuals, articles, peers, research publications, and experience. In this process, top management, the IT director, IT professionals, finance and accounts and other end users participate together to find a suitable solution.

Retrieved from "https://www.articleworld.org:80/index.php/Buying_center"