Marc Wouters

2019

How does the presence of value information influence organizational buyers? This question is critical for sales representatives that must decide how to sell their products. There is no empirical evidence available about how the presence of value information influences a customer’s preference for an offer, or the customer’s satisfaction, confidence and confusion. Additionally, there is not much known about how value selling is influenced by factors like the presence of goal conflicts or the group type (individual or small group) of the decision-makers. Three experiments examine how the presence value information, the presence of goal conflicts and the group type influence decision-makers in organizational buying situations. The results support the expectations that the presence of value information can influence the decision-maker’s intention to buy. The experiments yielded no significant results for the presence of value’s influence on satisfaction, confidence and confusion. A qualitative analysis of the participant’s reason for their preference revealed that participants in experimental conditions without the presence of value information tended to focus more often on the offer’s price than participants in experimental conditions with value information. The findings highlight the possible effectiveness of the use of value information in organizational buying decisions.