Organizational Buying Process in the 21st Century

Abstract: There are several models that can be found describing the organizational buying process. The organizational buying process (OBP) within B2B is also more complex and more time consuming than within B2C (Dwyer & Tanner Jr., 2002). The OBP is also continuously becoming more complex as new touchpoints are created through the rise of new communication channels (Mora Cortez & Johnston, 2017). Touchpoints are essentially places where the customer encounters the supplier (Moncrief & Marshall, 2005). These new communication channels and touchpoints have made the customer experience more important, although the customer experience is not yet well integrated into the OBP (Mora Cortez & Johnston, 2017). Social media is one of the new communication channels that has grown the last decade and has become important also for the OBP (Oyza & M. Edwin, 2015) With social media, companies have less control over the information online and social media is affecting companies in all industries (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). Despite some initial studies regarding social media, the effect they have on the OBP is still not well understood. The aim of this master thesis has therefore been to better understand how social media is affecting the OBP in terms of lead-time and win-rate. Win-rate can be used to measure sales success and is the percentage of the opportunities that the supplier won (Schultz, 2016). Through this case study, several semi-structured interviews were performed with both employees of the case study company and their customers. The data collected was thereafter analyzed through a thematic analysis resulting in various codes aligned under three main themes. The findings showed that LinkedIn was one of the main social media used. LinkedIn makes it easier to map out stakeholders and thereby also find new business opportunities through more quality leads. Within social media, targeted marketing was used toward selected organizations. With this said, social media has in different ways helped the company find more quality leads, influence the customer and also helped strengthen the brand of the company.