Stuying Emotions in Business Relationships

A paradigm of organizational buying behavior is that professional buyers pursue decisions based on rigorous cognitive analysis only. While consumer research suggests a strong influence of emotional aspects, literature on organizational buying predominantly emphasizes cognitive antecedents of purchasing decisions. However it is questionable, whether purchasing representatives really change their behavior so radically during their business hours. This paper studies the nature of emotions in the course of professional purchase decisions. Subsequent to a literature review, the findings of an exploratory study are presented. The empirical results of the qualitative investigation strongly support the assumption that emotions are an important determinant for professional buying decisions. Numerous positive and negative emotions have been found to be present during the day-by-day work of purchasing representatives in B2B firms. Altogether the findings of the study have laid a solid foundation for modeling the mediating influence of emotions on B2B purchasing decisions. Based on this, a conceptual model integrating emotional components into a decision model is proposed. This should help to empirically investigate the role of emotions in business relationships in a more general way in order to provide better preconditions for B2B relationships in general and better marketing and sales performance in particular.