Factors Affecting Attitudes among Buying-Center Members toward Adoption of an Ecologically-Related Regulatory Alternative: A New Application of Organizational Theory to a Public Policy Issue
Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online September, 1991
Factors Affecting Attitudes among Buying-Center Members toward Adoption of an Ecologically-Related Regulatory Alternative: A New Application of Organizational Theory to a Public Policy Issue
Little attention has been focused on the application of industrial marketing to macro-marketing theory, and only recently have academics become concerned with issues in ecology and business-government interface. Additionally, marketing theory and practice have centered on exchange between buyers and sellers in a consumer market; unfortunately the exchange paradigm has rarely been applied to the roles played by business and government as buyer and seller, respectively. This interdisciplinary study investigates industrial buying-center members’ attitudes toward the adoption of an ecologically-related government policy, currently known as the “Bubble.” The study explores the business-government interaction under economic incentive and political market domains. This article also point to one neglected area—the application of group dimension to the public policy issue in marketing. Guided by ecological marketing and diffusion theory, 42 firms involved in the Bubble policy project were surveyed. Findings suggest that benefit and uncertainty about the policy, as well as structure and climate of the buying-centers, were significant predictors of a firm's attitude toward adopting the policy.
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