The factors that impact customer buying decisions: An explorative case study of industrial piping hose

Abstract

The study focuses on exploring the sales representative set of supportive information, documents, and activities that impact the decision-making of customers on industrial piping hose. The information supplied to the customers during the three different phases is: (1) pre-sales: warranty document, assurance certification document, and auditing document; (2) during-sales: brand awareness, cynical information, and discount information; (3) after-sales: training information, customer relationship program, and after-sales onsite support. These provided details are explored to confirm the impact on the buying decisions of different sets of customers, namely the end-user, the budget holder, and the procurement officer, and the impact on different customer segments, such as the industrial user, the pipe hose distributor, and the re-seller. 40 current industrial customers who had bought the product were surveyed. The analysis of the results is accommodated by the logistic regression analysis. The results confirm that when dealing with procurement officers, the auditing document in the sales phase has the highest impact on the decision. For the budget holder, auditing and training are the two accountable pieces of information. For the end-user, training is the most important aspect. When dealing with the distributor, auditing and discount information are the most important. For the industrial end-user, the auditing, the technical information, and the discount are the highest factors. For the re-seller, the highest consideration accounts for training, onsite support, and the customer relationship enhancement program. The study helps shape sales representative activities when engaging different roles of customers in different industrial segments.