An Empirical Investigation of Institutional and Industrial Purchasing Structure

Investigates whether institutional and industrial organizations buying capital items exhibit different patterns of structural configuration across the purchasing cycle. Measures the structure of the purchasing function by three composite parameters especially developed for this research. These parameters express aspects of articulation, depth of analysis and decentralization respectively, and are measured for each of four purchasing cycle phases. Using regression analysis on data from certain Greek organizations, aims to investigate the differences in the purchasing structure arising from capital items purchases of institutions and industrial organizations respectively. This can help industrial marketeers to adapt their strategies to institutions′ purchasing patterns.