Organizational Buying Behavior: Where We Have Been and Where We Need to Go

After a strong start in the 1970s and 1980s, the field of organizational buying behavior (OBB) has been in the doldrums. The early conceptualizations by Wind, Webster, Sheth and other scholars provided a strong foundation for what we now call B2B (business-to-business) marketing. However, conceptual and methodological advancements beyond these early formulations have been minimal in the past 20 years, and the result is that we are not fully prepared to deal with the increasing complexity and dynamism of organizational buying behavior brought on by the impact of globalization, new digital communication technologies, and other market forces. In this paper, we provide an overview of the historical development of the OBB literature and attempt to identify issues and opportunities for bridge-building from the past to the future to stimulate a resurgence of interest in studying this important aspect of marketing.