MKTG 556 | Session 6 | When it pays to have a friend on the inside: contingent effects of buyer advocacy on B2B suppliers - 2019

Justin M. Lawrence & Andrew T. Crecelius & Lisa K. Scheer & Son K. Lam

Introduction:

As organizational buying systems become more complex and sophisticated, suppliers increasingly depend on buyer advocacy: an individual's efforts to influence colleagues to improve the supplier's standing. Drawing from cognitive response theory, the authors propose an inverted U-shaped relationship between a buyer's advocacy for a supplier and the customer's purchases from that supplier. They suggest that this effect is influenced by the advocate's industry experience and the characteristics of the customer–supplier relationship. Analyzing multisource data from a B2B service provider (Study 1) confirms the predicted inverted U-shaped relationship, while a unique dataset from a large industrial supplier (Study 2) broadly supports the proposed moderators. Finally, a randomized experiment (Study 3) reproduces key findings and supports the cognitive response mechanisms theorized. These results add to the limited literature on buyer advocacy in the organizational buying context and provide practical insights for suppliers and buyers.