Buying center
See also: buying centre, decision-making unit
A buying center is the group of people involved in a business purchase: users, influencers, gatekeepers, deciders and budget holders. In B2B naming it replaces the single persona, because the name has to work for several roles at once.
In practice
A name that delights the end user and embarrasses the person who has to justify the invoice has failed. In B2B the name is judged by roles with different incentives, and the brief has to name them.
The concept goes back to Webster and Wind, who in a 1972 Journal of Marketing paper described organisational buying as a group process and called the group the buying center. It is not a box on the org chart: it draws members from different functions for one purchase. The role labels used today, such as user, influencer and decider, come from later work.
In a naming project this changes who has to be satisfied. The user wants a name that is easy to say. The person who signs wants one that is easy to defend on an invoice and in a supplier review. A gatekeeper may only ever see it in a form field. The usual failure is naming for the user alone, in the register of a consumer product, and meeting the budget holder's discomfort at the end. List the roles in the brief and, for each, write what the name must not make them do: explain, apologise or justify.
Where this sits in the process
The studio treats this as part of a single run rather than a separate service: the category is read, the creative direction is chosen from what the research found, candidates are generated in volume and then cut against criteria that were written down first. See how the studio works for what that produces, or the naming module for the stages themselves.
Related concepts
- Persona: A persona is a person, not a demographic bracket.
- Persona validation: Testing names against built personas instead of team taste: what the method surfaces that a meeting does not.
- Naming brief: What belongs in a naming brief, and why the markets and languages have to be named before generation starts.
Frequently asked questions
What is the buying center?
The buying center is the group of people involved in a business purchase: users, influencers, gatekeepers, deciders and budget holders. They come from different functions and are assembled for one purchase, not listed in the org chart.
What roles are in a buying center?
Commonly users, influencers, gatekeepers, deciders and buyers or budget holders. One person can hold several roles and a role can be held by several people. The labels vary between authors, so treat them as a checklist, not a standard.
Who makes the decision in a B2B purchase?
Usually a group. The person who uses the product, the person who controls the budget and the person who checks risk can all hold a veto. That is why B2B naming has to work for several people with different motives.
How does the buying center affect naming?
It replaces the single persona with several roles. The name has to be easy for the user to say, easy for the budget holder to justify on an invoice and unremarkable to the person who checks suppliers. The brief should list the roles.
Sources
- [1]Buying center— Wikipedia
- [2]Organisational buying behaviour— slm.mba