The author investigates factors that affect an individual's influence in a buying center. A field investigation of 251 organizational purchase decisions suggests that expert power is the most important influence determinant, followed by reinforcement power. Interestingly, the effectiveness of individual power bases is found to vary with buying center size, viscidity, time pressure, and the strength of accompanying influence attempts. New measures of different types of power and influence in group settings are developed, validated, and offered for use in future research.
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