Are Business Buyers Emotional?

We need to dwell deep into the minds of business buyers to understand the intricacies of corporate decision making process. Let us imagine that we are in a court of law and two advocates representing emotional and rational clients argue the case…

Emotional Advocate: Companies don’t buy from companies. People buy from people.

Rational Advocate: Purchase decision depends on a matrix of tangible features and price.

Emotional Advocate: “Buyers make most decisions by relying on their two-second first impressions based on stored memories, images and feelings.” says Malcolm Gladwell, author of the book titled Blink: The power of thinking without thinking.

Rational Advocate: Business decisions are not made by an individual. It is often done by a group of informed people.

Emotional Advocate: Even a big team can be overwhelmed by choices, features, data and metrics. No matter how disciplined a buying process is, human mind will use heuristics to simplify the decision making. It can be conscious or subconscious.

Rational Advocate: A group of number crunchers can analyze and interpret any complex data and store them within the confines of a spreadsheet.

Emotional Advocate: A business buyer may not be congratulated for making a good purchase decision. But a bad decision can put him/her in an ugly spot.

Rational Advocate: Exactly why business buyer will be overcautious and will not take a decision in haste.

Emotional Advocate: So, buyer weighs purchase decisions both rationally and emotionally. Since brands operate on an emotional level, by creating and sustaining the right brand associations in the buyer’s mind, business seller can close the deal in his/her favor.

Now after a bout of intelligent arguments let us hear what the Judges had to say: “In the industrial world, where rational purchasing decisions tend to be the rule, human factors can also play a critical role in differentiating products and services from the competition. Even if your company sells so-called ‘commodities’, the human factor is often an unexploited element that could strengthen your competitive position. At the end of the day, all business transactions involve people selling product and service solutions to solve other people’s problems.” – By Philip Kotler & Waldemar Pfoertsch – B2B Brand Management.

So, it is evident that business buyers are both rational and emotional. Court dismissed.


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in