Structure of the Buying Center

A NEW APPROACH FOR DETERMINIG THE STRUCTURE OF THE BUYING CENTER
Assistant Sitar Corina Pop Sitar Ph.D. candidate Anne-Marie Hordău, North University of Baia Mare, Victoriei Nr. 76, Tel: [phone], e-mail: [e-mail]; [e-mail]

Abstract: Although the buying center concept has made an important contribution to the study of organizational buying behavior, comprehensive research of the buying center structure has been limited. This paper extends the understanding of the structure of the buying center by showing and defining all the factors that have an impact on the buying center structure and by developing a framework for determining the structure of the buying center. The main value added of our framework is that is comprehensive and takes into consideration all the factors that have an impact on the buying center structure. In addition to all the factors studied before, our framework contains a new construct, the environmental characteristics, which has not been studied before by other researchers. Within each construct we added some new characteristics and we eliminated the duplications. Key words: buying center; purchasing management; organizational behavior.

Literature review
The buying center notion has been one of the most important conceptual contributions made in the study of organizational buying behavior. The concept of the buying center refers to all those members of an organization who become involved in the buying process for a particular product or service (Robinson et. al 1967). The main research streams of investigation found in literature include: buying center structure and factors that influence it; influence of members of the buying center; and communication between members of the buying center. Most researchers have studied the changes in the buying center (BC) composition and structure over the buying process and the factors that determined these changes. Researchers that studied the factors that determine

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