The industrial purchasing research framework: a comparison of theoretical perspectives from micro economics, marketing and organization science

Industrial purchasing is a growing discipline with a broad scope of research issues. Research contributions vary greatly with respect to problem issues, the level of analysis, research methods and the application of theoretical frameworks. Literature reviews in the purchasing research field give the reader some tracks back to current theoretical frameworks, for instance industrial buying behavior or economics of organization. Notwithstanding, explicit and precise references to these frameworks are usually rare compared to the marketing science tradition which has built its research tradition and theoretical framework on established sciences, e.g. micro economics, organization science, sociology and psychology. This article presents and compares some contributions from micro economic theory, industrial buying behavior and inter‐organizational theory that make appropriate theoretical approaches to industrial purchasing research.