Participants in the Business Buying Process Essay

Who does the buying of the trillions of dollars’ worth of goods and services needed by the business organizations? Purchasing agents are influential in straight -re-buy and modified re situations, whereas other department personnel are more influential in the new-buy situations. Engineering personnel usually have a major influence in selecting the product components, and purchasing agents dominate in selecting suppliers. Webster and Wind call the decision making unit of a buying organization the buying center. The buying center is composed of â€Å"all those individuals and groups who participate in the purchasing from the decision†. The buying center includes all members of the organization who play any of seven roles in the purchase decision process. Several roles of organization buying: Initiators: Those who request that something be purchased. They may be users or others in the organization. Users: Those who will use the product or service. In many cases, the users initiate the buying proposal and help define the product requirements. Influencers: People who influence the buying decision. They often help define specifications and also provide information for evaluating alternatives. Technical personnel are particularly important influencers. Deciders: People who decide on product requirements or on suppliers. Approvers: People who authorize the proposed actions of deciders and buyers. Approvers: People who authorize the proposed actions of deciders or buyers Buyers: People who have formal authority to select the supplier and arrange the purchase terms. Buyers may help shape product specifications, but they  play major role in selecting vendors. Buyers may help shape product specifications, but they play their major role in selecting vendors and negotiating. In more complex purchases, the buyers might include high-level managers. Gatekeepers: People who have the power to prevent sellers or information from reaching members of buying center. For example, purchasing agent, receptionists, and telephone operators may prevent salesperson from contacting users or deciders. The average number of people involved in a buying decision ranges from about three (for services and items used in day-to-day operations) to almost five (for such high tickets purchases as construction and machinery). To target their efforts properly, business marketers have to figure out: who are the major decision participants? What decisions do they influence? What is the level of their influence? What criteria do they used? When a buying center includes many participants, the business marketer will not have time or resources to each out to all of them. Small sellers concentrate on reaching they key buying influencers. Larger sellers go for multilevel in-depth selling to reach as many participants as possible. Their salespeople virtually â€Å"live† with their high volume customers. Companies will have to rely more heavily on their communications program to reach hidden buying influences and keep their current customers informed. Business marketers must periodically review their assumptions about the buying center participants. Major Influences on Buying Decisions Business buyers respond to many influences when they make their decisions. When suppliers’ offerings are similar, business buyers can satisfy the purchasing requirements with any supplier, and they place more weight on the personal treatment they receive. Where supplier offering differs substantially, business buyers are more accountable for their choices and pay more attention to economic factors. Business buyers respond to four main influences: environmental, organizational, interpersonal, and individual. 1. Environmental Factors Business buyers pay close attention to current and expected economic factors, such as the level of production, investment, consumer spending, and interest rate. In a recession, business buyer reduces their investment in plant, equipment, and inventories. Companies are fears of shortage of key materials are willing to buy and hold large inventories. They will sign long term contracts with suppliers to ensure a steady flow of materials. 2. Organization Factors Every organization has specific purchasing objectives, policies, procedures, organizational structures, and systems. Business marketers need to be aware of the following organization trends in the purchasing area. Purchasing Up Grading: The new, more strategically oriented purchasing departments have been changed, from old-fashion â€Å"fashion departments† with an emphasis on buying at the lowest cost, to â€Å"procurement departments† with a mission to seek the best value from fewer and better suppliers. Some multinationals have even elevated to â€Å"strategic supply departments† with responsibility for global sourcing and partnership. Cross-functional Roles: Most purchasing professionals describe their job as less clerical, more strategic, technical, team oriented, and involving more responsibility than even before. Sixty-one percent of buyers surveyed said the buying group was more involved in new-product design and development than it was five years ago; more than half the buyers participate in cross-functional teams, with suppliers well represented. Central Purchasing: In multidivisional companies, most purchasing is carried out by separate divisions because of their different needs. Some companies, however, have started to centralize their purchasing. Headquarters identifies materials purchased by several divisions and buys them centrally, thereby gaining more purchasing clout. The individual divisions can buy from another source if they can get a better deal; in general, centralized purchased purchasing produces substantial savings. For the business marketer, this development means dealing with fewer and higher-level buyers and using a national account sales group to deal with large corporation. Decentralized Purchasing of Small-Ticket Item: At the same time, companies are decentralizing some purchasing operations by empowering employees to purchase small-ticket items such as binders, coffeemakers, etc. Internet Purchasing: Forrester Research estimates that B2B transactions over the net reached $2.7 trillion in 2004. The move to internet purchasing has far reaching implications for suppliers and will change the shape of purchasing for years to come. Other Organization Factors: Long Term Contract. Business buyers are increasingly initiating accepting long -term contracts with reliable suppliers. Business markets are using internets to set-up extranets with important customers to facilitate and lower the cost of transactions. Their customers enter orders directly on the computer, and these orders are automatically transmitted to the supplier. Some companies go further and shift the ordering responsibility to their suppliers in system called vendor-managed inventory. These suppliers are privy to the customer’s inventory levels and take responsibility to replenish automatically through continuous replenishment programs. Purchasing-Performance Evaluation and Buyers’ Professional Development: many companies have set up incentive system to reward purchasing managers for good buying performance, in much the same way that sales personnel receive bonuses for good selling performance. These systems are leading purchasing  managers to increase pressure on sellers for the best terms. Improved Supply Chain Management: Purchasing executives are increasingly involved in working with marketing and other company executives in building a seamless supply chain management system from the purchase of raw materials to the on-time arrival of finished goods to the end users. Interpersonal and Individual Factors Buying centers usually include several participants with differing interests, authority, empathy and persuasiveness. Each buyer carries personal motivations, perceptions, and preferences, which are influenced by buyer’s age, income, job position, personality, attitudes towards risk, and culture. Cultural Factors Buying factors vary from one country to another. Here are some rules of social and business etiquette that marketers should understand when doing business in other countries.

A Life’s Music Essay

Taking a deeper look at a passage, pages 5-6, out of Andreà ¯ Makine’s book A Life’s Music, you get a real sense of his style and the appropriateness of its title. Makine shows his skills as a writer in this book, you read so much music in the book and when read out loud it is literally music to your ears. The book almost flows as you read it and so makes it a joy to read. He uses a lot of literary devices to give you this sense of music and flow; onomatopoeia, metaphor, smiles and adjectives. In this passage, pages 5-6, Makine uses a vast amount of onomatopoeic words such as; ‘crunch’, ‘crackles’, ‘hisses’, ‘wail’, ‘whimperings’. He has them in the whole passage, as well as the book. Because of this Makine gives the book a sense of music, by this I mean that the book not only has onomatopoeic words and also reads like music, when read out loud, but also feels like music when read. Makine is so clever, he manages to make the book into music and thanks to this, you are completely and utterly engrosses into the book, once you have started reading it, you’ll not stop. Another show of his cleverness is his opening line of the book â€Å"I have just woken up, having dreamed of music.† (P.5 L.1) Makine introduces us to the first chapter of his book with stating that he (unnamed character) has dreamed of music and from then on in the book is filled and consists of music. It is a very clever way of starting the book, the first line of the book and we are lead in with music and what a strange sentence, dreaming of music, one does not usually dream of music. Within the first two sentences you can depict the style of the book, music. The music in this passage is not very a happy one, in fact it is rather depressing and rough; â€Å"Snore call out to one another(.)†, â€Å"The wail of an infant(.)†, â€Å"An ocean swell of sighs(.)† and â€Å"The wind wips(.)†. All of these quotations give you an image of a rather miserable place, not somewhere you would want to be. Makine uses these quotations really well; they give you a great feel for the place and of the atmosphere at the train station. The music in the passage is really well used to describe the feelings of the people at the station â€Å"The wail of an infant rings out very clearly in the darkness, fades into little whimperings as it suck, falls silent.† (P5-6 L.21-23) The music is used to show the extent of the infant’s unhappiness and its progressions as the emotion subsides. You get a feel of the infant’s urgency for the object that it seeks and once received the infant calms and so does the loudness of the music. Furthermore he uses music to show us the people’s responses to things â€Å"An ocean swell of sighs ripples through the waiting-room. But the truth is that no one expects anything more.† (P.6 L.28-30) The waiting people get told their train is delayed and as you would expect they sigh the point is, they sigh in such a way that it sounds just like an the ocean. Here Makine does not solely use and an onomatopoeic word, but also a metaphor ‘an ocean swell of sighs’. This gives you an image of the people sighing just like they would do a Mexican wave and it gives the sound of the sigh such a magnitude. Furthermore this quotation is a great example in the passage of how the book flows from one sentence to the next. Along with Makine’s great use of music, he uses a lot of adjectives and they go hand in hand with his music. His adjectives give this passage a tone of violence and it constantly affects the atmosphere ‘hurls’, ‘shout’, ‘beat’, ‘grudgingly’ and ‘hardness’. With the soldiers the adjectives are used to give this sense of potential violence â€Å"(A) muffled shout of laughter, then a crunch of a fragment of glass under a foot, an oath. Two soldiers (†¦) beat a path through the mass of huddled bodies.† (P.5 L.16-20) These soldiers give off this feel of violence, it seems if provoked they would fight and they seem to want to fight, they ‘beat a path’ through a mass of people, they are provoking the people to stand up say something about their behaviour. Furthermore at the end of the passage Makine uses simile to further enhance his tone of violence; â€Å"(I)t looks like a battlefield strewn with dead†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (P.6 L.45) This simile really ties a bow on the tone, at this point there is no longer the possibility for there to be doubt over the tone. You are given such an image of violence this mass of people at the train station are laying down on this hard floor and they are so unmoving and massed together they just look like a mass of corpses. It is quite a horrifying image. In conclusion Andreà ¯ Makine’s style is very clearly music, the sound and the flow of it, and he uses onomatopoeia to translate it into the book and does so very successfully. He uses metaphors to emphasize the music in the book and the metaphors also help to give the music an increased magnitude. In combination with these literary devices Makine also uses similes and a through use of adjectives to make the music in the book stand out and to help the book flow from one sentence to the next. I personally really loved this book, it has stuck out as book among the books I have thus far read and I think it will continue to do so. Andreà ¯ Makine is a wonderful and skilled writer, the fact that he gave this book its title A Life’s Music is no wonder at all, it breathes music.

Personal Troubles

When our country goes into a recession and Jobs have to get cut that is out of the individuals control. It isn't their fault a company has to lay people off due to lack of money. Also you see things like the cost of living and healthcare which are very expensive for people to afford right now. A lot of people have a Job and work hard and still can't afford healthcare or a a decent home. That Is my understanding of the public Issues. Things that happen in the country that Is a bad break for people. My understanding of personal Issues is things that happen to certain individuals such as n Injury or Illness, another thing out of their control.People get hurt and can't work and that results In a lower standard of living for them and their family. Also some personal issues can be controlled such as when someone wants to get another job or quit their job. Some get fired for not performing well, this is something they could have controlled and as a result are now in poverty. It goes both wa ys there are way people get into poverty that are Just out of their control and some ways some of these people could have prevented. In many ways â€Å"personal troubles† and â€Å"public issues† go hand in hand when it comes to poverty.Often times public issues can cause personal troubles. For example, a factory closing In a small town is a public Issue, affecting the city government and citizens of the town. The closing of a factory will cause personal troubles for the workers who are now unemployed. Personal troubles and public Issues can both lead to poverty. Factors that lead to poverty that can be controlled by an individual could be how they spend/save the money that they earn. A person that makes a argue income, for example, might not be good at investing their money into the needs of their family and waste it instead, bringing them into poverty.On the other hand, a family with a lesser income who save and spend wisely may be considered â€Å"middle-class†. Factors that are beyond an individual's control might include war, the country's economy, no available Jobs, and catastrophes (hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. ). Sociological Imagination Is the link between â€Å"personal troubles† and â€Å"public Issues†. To understand this you must understand the connection between the two Issues. Personal troubles describes the character of an Individual and what social Issues are affecting him or her directly.Public issues are matters that can't be controlled by the contribute to poverty that an individual can control are; controlling spending tendencies, get an education to help get Jobs, and living in an affordable area. Factors that are beyond the individuals control are; prices of necessary life demands such as food, clothing shelter, and taxes. Both of these factors contribute to poverty because the personal troubles of one person will eventually lead to public issues. An example loud be a individual who gets fired for not having the appropriate skills brings up the societies unemployment rate.After thoroughly learning about Sociological Imagination it is clear that you must understand what public issues is and personal troubles is. Public issues are problems that come up that you can't control. And it does not only affect you as an individual but the society as a whole. Personal troubles are problems that society creates that affect you as an individual. Many times public issues and personal troubles are linked together. In response to Poverty in the US there are many resistances where the public issues create personal troubles on an individual.For example, if a company goes out of business and goes bankrupt then everyone in that company is now unemployed. That is something they had no control over and now it's a personal trouble for them. I think that a personal problem pertaining to poverty could be someone who doesn't manage or invest his or her income well. If an injury were to happen and they do n't have enough money to cover it, I think that would be something they could have prevented. You can prevent an injury and you can also learn how to deal with your money better.

Tools for E-Businesses Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Tools for E-Businesses - Research Paper Example Since the first website appeared online, organizations, companies and institutions have gone on a rush. It is not enough to be on-line with a domain name and a simple website. A useful and well-designed website is an important factor to consider. Website statics are a major concern for the management who want to realize a return on investment for their money1. Despite the overrated chants for this new-age business concept that has suddenly become the goal of many commercial organizations, not much has changed in the traditional way of handling various business processes. E-business maintains the same principles of business operation as traditional commerce: people, both sellers and buyers, come together to exchange commodities and services over a network of computers. Ordering, buying, bidding, selling, customer services, inquiries and virtually all the business processes still uphold the underlying principles of commerce. E-commerce is a subset of the overall e-business strategy. It chiefly seeks to improve the buy-sell transaction activities in a business; as a result it increases the revenue. In a way e-commerce covers a range of on-line business activities for services and products, both businesses to customer and business to business on the Internet as a platform. E-commerce breaks the process of online business into showing the scope activities and information that is provided to the customer to conduct business and online shopping. Multiple and different functions go into the requirements of e-businesses. For instance, there are some basic functional necessities that cover the sort of specialized that perform the functions that run on the e-business mode. There are also other functions that cover the software and hardware requirements to carry out the same services. An analysis of how e-businesses verity credit, process an order and how they fulfill the order as well as how they verity shipments and all or any post sales process needs to be considered wh ile assessing the performance of an e-business. Functionality, both technical and non-technical, is fundamental for an e-business2. Technical functionality refers to the information processing capability of the e-business systems. It points to the server requirements, Internet speed requirement etc. These functional requirements are the foundations and platforms of the e-businesses. The nature that makes business processes virtual in e-business is supported by these systems. Many stakeholders control the entire system and as such an e-businesses smooth operation especially when operating online is controlled by many other people or organizations. Additionally, e-businesses need other functionality such as security, scalability and reliability to be in place. This may make or break a venture and essentially are what keeps any e-business venture in operation. Without security, performing reliable business functions will not be with trust on the end of the consumer. Consumer trust is v ital just like with a traditional store. Building consumer confidence in your system is in this case a good sign of growing business. Order processing needs the transaction processing and database information mining. Speed and efficiency are factors that are considered in evaluating the usability of a system supporting e-business. Payment methods include credit cards, electronic checking and digital cash.

Robert Flaherty & American Documentary (1920's) Essay

Robert Flaherty & American Documentary (1920's) - Essay Example The book written in 1922 has been produced as a video but its production faces various controversies that are worth noting (Barnouw). According to the Inuit, spears were used in hunting during those times before the influence of the European that led to hunting using guns (Stern). The controversy is that the use of the gun is a European influence. Another controversy is the staging of the players in the film especially the two females which include Nyla and Cunayou his wife and daughter respectively. The actors are not his real wife and child respectively. Flaherty as a filmmaker enjoyed both good and rough moments in his life. he was forced to travel all over the US and Europe and other countries while trying to make his films. He also suffered in terms of proper skill in film production that has led to great critics on his Nanook film. He was ones fired for production of long films. However, his struggle has met several success and to date he is regarded as one of the best filmmakers in the history of US. Amongst some of his works that caught the attention of the Us government is his documentary on US agriculture. Flaherty highlighted the rural life of American, the process of soil erosion, competition between natives and immigrants such as Philippines in terms of agriculture, and rural urban migration not forgetting unemployment and great competition in the agricultural sector in the US. The film industry respects the works of Flaherty and regards him as the pioneer of documentary filming. Flaherty engaged mostly in fiction and non-fiction filming basing most of his stories from books. Some of his works contained poetry and they include Flaherty Island, Belcher Island, and Hudson Bay. After his death, Flaherty is remembered in an international annual event usually held in New York. However, this legacy is argued to be having no effect on recent generations due to the

Most Wanted Transportation Improvement Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Most Wanted Transportation Improvement - Essay Example Board saw the need to alert the public about the different safety regulations which have to be imposed and which have to be complied with in the transportation sector. The safety of Emergency Medical Services flights, more particularly the Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) flights were recently added to the list. The NTSB accurately pointed out that the mission of the EMS is to save lives; therefore, operating an EMS flight in an unsafe environment â€Å"just makes no sense† (Rosenker, as quoted by Air Safety Week, 2008). This most wanted improvement identified by the NTSB involves the â€Å"conduct of flights with medical personnel on board in accordance with commuter aircraft regulations† (NTSB, 2009). This improvement is also being described in terms of developing and implementing flight risk evaluation programs; requiring formalized dispatch and flight-following procedures plus up-to-date weather information; and installing terrain awareness and warning systems on aircrafts (NTSB, 2009). In 2006, the NTSB adopted the NTSB Special Investigation Report where they sought out to establish the importance of the EMS and of guaranteeing the safety of these flights. This report assessed EMS accidents from January 2002 to January 2005 and they were able to uncover about 55 EMS accidents during said time with 29 of these accidents preventable through corrective measures (SafeMedFlight, n.d). Most of these flights involved helicopters deployed by the EMS where, most recent figures registered a total of 35 casualties. The preventable nature of these accidents is an important indicator of the need to implement changes and improvements in EMS flights. The report above prompted the NTSB to seek the assistance of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in order for the latter to adopt measures in order to improve the safety of EMS flights. The NTSB was able to establish, during its investigation and assessments, that there seem to be less stringent

Sony attacked by cyber criminals Research Paper

Sony attacked by cyber criminals - Research Paper Example Once such attack is the one that was experienced by Sony Corporation, a division of Sony that deals with electronics in the United States of America with headquarters in San Francisco. This paper will look into details that case of cyber attack into the company’s website, Sony corporation, the American division of the multinational Sony organization are one of the organizations that have been affected by the computer hackers into its system and compromising data that belong to its clients. The attack, which is credited to a hacking group called collective anonymous (Amoroso, 2007). It will also dwell on the process that the hackers used in order to gain access to the Sony website and how the attack was handled by Sony, in addition the various ways I which to avoid such incidents from happening again will be discussed. Threat actors Anonymous collective or ‘Anons’ as it is referred to which is the short form for its full name is a group that was formed in 2004 that is against any form of censorship of online interactions, any type of censorship by governments or organizations where they respond by hacking websites belonging to church organizations, government agencies or departments, or organizations. In the recent past attacks have been launched to websites that belong to US, Israel and Uganda governments and in organizations like MasterCard, Visa PayPal and Sony among others. Anonymous collective, which is the group, that is suspected to have been behind the hacking of the website of Sony, is a group that is largely decentralized in its command structure without any rules that govern it rather it is governed by ideas. What sort of people would go after this type of information and why? This group, was created for entertainment purposes and the information they get which is mainly user names and passwords of subscribers is used to threaten the company to stop the directives on tinkering of play station 3. The information that they stole woul d be important on online hackers since credit card information and passwords got from the website can be used to access bank accounts of the users, therefore, the likelihood of making money transfers to their accounts (Pankaj, 2005). Investigations into the attack by anonymous collective group on Sony are going on, and it is estimated to cost the firm a total of $170 million, in the investigation. The company discovered that the data of about 8500 users’ data had been accessed. The attack did not happen as a surprise to Sony as there were some warnings that had been sent to the company. The group, which was on a revenge mission, attacked MasterCard’s website in December and was after Sony corporation had arrested a young boy of 21 years for allegedly posting information on how to modify play station 3 gaming console on the internet. The group had also announced that it was on a revenge mission that it called ‘operation payback’ on its website anonnews.org, However, in May, the group, announced the group announced that it was not responsible for the attack, but its members, operating individually may have been behind the breach on the Sony site. How did they get it? The process, which the group may have used in the hacking of th