Interrelationships among key aspects of the organizational procurement process

For decades, there has been research on specific buying approaches and procedures used by organizational customers. Yet, there has been only limited effort to conceptualize the key higher order constructs that characterize organizational buying as a process. It is therefore useful to evaluate the simultaneous interrelationships among different aspects of the overall procurement process and how they vary with characteristics of the purchase situation. This research addresses these issues. We draw on structural equation modeling techniques and use a sample of 636 purchases to develop and test a parsimonious integrative model of interrelationships among key aspects of the procurement process. In general, our results support our model of the procurement process, including relationships among purchase importance, extensiveness of choice set, buyer power, reliance on procedural controls, a proactive focus on long-term strategic issues, search for information, and the use of formal analytical tools.