Constructing thick descriptions of marketers’ and buyers’ decision processes in business‐to‐business relationships

A central finding in the relationship marketing/buying literature is that the thought and decision processes by both marketers and buyers include a series of branching, if‐then, questions and answers. For example, will customer X accept a 7 percent price increase? The correct answer: acceptance depends on the changes in the other attributes on the table (i.e. in the bid proposal or product‐service design). Consequently, from designing and evaluating bid‐purchase proposals to evaluating the current state of the overall seller‐buyer relationship, the perceived value of the level of any given attribute depends in part of the value perceived in the levels of several other attributes. Possibly, business‐to‐business decisions and outcomes may be understood best by constructing thick descriptions of the multiple contingency paths that marketers and buyers think about and sometimes enact when deciding. We report the use of two “think aloud” methods to learn the contingency thoughts and decisions of marketers and buyers of industrial solvents. The main conclusions of the study: designing generalized “gatekeeping”, contingency, models of if‐then decision paths can be achieved; these models are useful for constructing accurate behavioral theories of marketer‐buyer relationships.