کاهش عدم اطمینان در تصمیم گیری خریدار در خرید سازمانی: می تواند اعتماد تامین کننده، تعهد و وابستگی به وضعیت موجود کمکی کند؟

Given its negative effects on purchase behaviors, organizational buyers' decision-making uncertainty (DMU) needs to be reduced. The marketing literature still lacks insights on how business marketers can help reduce organizational buyers' DMU, especially through relationship-building approaches. We developed a conceptual model on whether the organizational buyer's DMU can be reduced by the buyer's perceptions of supplier trust, supplier commitment, and supplier dependence. Based on data collected from a national sample, our study confirms the significant negative effect of buyers' trust in the supplier on their uncertainty in purchase decisions. Buyers' trust can be enhanced if buyers perceive suppliers to be trusting of the buyers and if buyers perceive the suppliers to be highly committed to the relationship. Buyers' perception of the supplier's dependence does not significantly increase buyers' trust, but it does have a direct effect on DMU.

DMU, a highly salient reality facing many business purchase decisions, adversely affects buyer decision making in several ways. For example, DMU increases perceived risk, dampens buyer beliefs, and undermines of the efficacy of suppliers' attempts at performance enhancement and cost cutting. With its many negative and strong effects on buyer purchase decision making, the supplier should manage buyer uncertainty. Previous research in both consumer and business-to-business marketing has dealt primarily with the issue of what buyers do to reduce uncertainty in their purchase decisions. The scant studies on what the seller can do to help reduce buyer DMU have been limited to issues such as information dissemination. Up till now, we lacked in understanding as to how the supplier could use relationship-building strategies to reduce buyers' DMU. Our study was designed to fill this important void in business-to-business marketing by showing that suppliers' relationship-building practices, once properly noted by the organizational buyer, do indeed serve to reduce buyers' DMU. We focused on the effects of three supplier-side relational constructs, namely, supplier trust, supplier commitment, and supplier dependence. Specifically, we investigated whether an organizational buyer would perceive a purchase decision to be less uncertain if the supplier demonstrates to the buyer that it trusts the buyer, is committed to the business relationship, and is highly dependent on the buyer. The study results confirmed the significant role of buyers' trust in reducing DMU in a purchase decision. Our study also suggests that buyer trust in the supplier mediates the negative effects of buyer-perceived supplier trust and buyer-perceived supplier commitment on buyer's DMU. Buyer-perceived supplier dependence was found to directly increase buyer DMU but not buyer trust. By addressing an important research issue with a literature-based conceptual model, data collected from a large national sample representative of business-to-business buyer community and an adequate model testing methodology, our study adds significantly to the business marketing literature. Our findings demonstrate that buyer DMU can indeed be managed by building buyer trust, which in turn can be established by the supplier's increasing and demonstrating relationship commitment, trust, and dependence.