The Purchasing Agent: Friend or Foe to the Salesperson?

Abstract

This research investigates the links between the negotia tion performance, personal characteristics, and aptitudes, for a sample of 460 purchasing agents. Negotiation perform ance, in the adversarial sense, and buyer empathy were not found to be important. Buyers who were motivated, satisfied and certain of management expectations performed best. These findings confirm earlier results by the same researchers.