Illuminas the Convergence of B2b and Consumer Marketing

8/3/2019 Illuminas the Convergence of B2b and Consumer Marketing

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The Convergence of B2b and Consumer Marketing and itsImplications for B2b Marketing and Research Practice

Jonathan Fletcher, Creative Director, Illuminas Group

Introduction

One of the stereotypical images of a corporate buyer in the middle part of the last century was

of a man who never had to buy his own booze at Christmas or pay for a round of golf in

summer, because his suppliers catered to his personal needs as well as his business needs.

Such blatantly corrupt practices are a thing of the past (in Western markets at least). But quite

legitimate personal considerations of different kinds do still play a role in many business

buying decisions and a number of trends in business and society are likely to make this more

common.

The first section of the paper will look at the range of general similarities which already exist

between business purchase decisions and consumer purchase decisions. The second section

explores examples of B2b markets which already have a strong consumer purchase dimension

to them. The third and forth sections of the paper explore the trends in business and the wider

society which the author believes will drive the spread of personal criteria in the business

purchase decision into a wide range of markets. The final section of the paper will explore the

implications of the convergence between B2b and consumer purchasing for B2b research and

marketing.

Some general similarities between business and consumer purchase decisions

The idea that business purchase decisions are similar in some respects to consumer purchase

decisions is nothing new. As long ago as 1973 Jagdish Sheth wrote

‘. . . similar to consumer behaviour, the industrial buyers often decide on factors other

than rational or realistic criteria’

(Sheth, 1973)

However, the undeniable differences between consumer and business purchase decisions are

all too easy to caricature. This is particularly the case with larger businesses. Whilst the

overlap between business and consumer decision-making is generally acknowledged in the

case of SMEs (see for example, Dexter and Behan, 1999), it is often assumed that purchase

decision-making in larger businesses differs qualitatively from consumer purchase decision-

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making. This assumption can be summarized in two myths.

Myth number 1: Purchase decisions within large businesses are largely rational whereas

consumer decisions are largely emotional

In fact it is unlikely that any decision in any sphere of life is entirely free from some form of emotional stain. The findings of neuroscience seem to indicate that all forms of practical

judgment are underpinned by feeling states. Individuals who have suffered neurological

damage which dissociates their higher cognitive processes from the emotional centre of the

brain in the limbic system seem unable to balance risks, costs and benefits in the way required

to make real-life decisions (Damasio, 1996). The emotional basis of thought is manifest in a

number of strictly non-rational biases to which our thinking and decision-making is subject.

One such bias is our tendency to attach a greater value to potential losses than to potential

gains, a phenomenon first described in Kahneman and Tversky’s Prospect Theory (Kahnemanand Tversky, 1979). It has long been known that consumer reasoning is subject to this bias.

For example, consumers will buy lottery tickets (small cost for potentially large gain) and

insurances (medium sized outlay to avoid large losses) but are generally not prepared to risk

larger sums of money in high yield, high risk investments. But this tendency can also be seen

very clearly in the risk aversion that characterizes much business buying behaviour. There was

a saying amongst computer executives in the 1970’s that ‘No one ever got fired for choosing

IBM’. Although cheaper solutions than IBM were available, virtually no cost saving was

thought to be worth the perceived greater risk of these alternative solutions failing. This

phenomenon is alive and well, though to judge from the blogging on the subject is apparentlynow updated as ‘No one ever got fired for choosing Microsoft’!

This type of behaviour is an example of what economists and decision theorists call Bounded

Rationality. The theory of Bounded Rationality maintains that in the vast majority of decision

making situations the decision-maker is unable to meet the 3 main requirements of strictly

rational behaviour. That is to say, the decision maker cannot: 1) identify all possible

alternatives; 2) establish what the consequences of pursuing each of these alternatives would

be; or 3) compare the benefits of these different consequences. The decision-maker cannot dothis because he/she lacks the time and information processing capacity. As Herbert Simon, the

leading theorist of Bounded Rationality, expressed it:

‘ . . information consumes . . . the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of

information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention

efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.’

(Simon, 1971)

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To allocate information efficiently the decision-maker simplifies the problem facing him or her

by using heuristics – rules of thumb and shortcuts to cut down the range of alternatives and

evaluative variables that bear on the problem. This heuristic process draws on a whole range

sources, most of them not purely empirical. This is where emotional and other motivated

biases enter into the decision. Consumers, for example, cut through the huge range of choicefacing them by using diverse techniques such as relying on emotional commitment to brands or

word of mouth recommendation or by focusing on a single, lead attribute such as price and

aiming for a low, medium or high spot in the category price range.

Some of the emotional biases which enter into our heuristic reasoning are innate, programmed

into us by our evolutionary past. For example, the reason we are more sensitive to losses than

gains is probably that for much of our evolutionary past we were not faced with a superfluity of

resources as we are now, but instead had to focus on survival and subsistence. In such asituation losses can be fatal, whereas there is little use for gains beyond a certain subsistence

level. But these biases may also be motivated by the situation the decision-makers find

themselves in. In business decision-making contexts these can include a whole range of

factors. Some of them may relate to the interests of the firm, such as its interest in maximizing

profits. But many of the biases will relate to the decision-maker’s own interests – everything

from a desire to be thought well of and advance in the organisation to the need to balance work

and personal life by not spending too long at work. Which brings us to the second myth.

Myth number 2: Purchase decisions in large businesses are disinterested, impersonaldecisions

The Decision Making Unit (DMU) or Buying Centre framework helps us to organise how we

research business decisions. However, it can give the impression that business decision

making is well organised with individuals in clearly defined and fixed roles, co-operating to

make the best decision for the business. In fact, for most purchase decisions this is very far

from the truth. A more accurate (though still rather oversimplified) depiction of the process

would be as a sort of war between competing individuals and functions each seeking to furthertheir own interests by their participation in the decision. Theorists of the firm have long held

the view that individuals within businesses pursue their own personal interests in parallel with,

but to some degree at the cost of, the interests of the firm as a whole. In the 1960’s economists

such as William Baumol (Baumol, 1959) and Oliver Williamson argued that managers aim to

maximize a single personal interest such as salary, perks, job security or status, whilst

achieving a minimum acceptable level of profit for the company. The asymmetry in

information and knowledge between managers and business owners (such a shareholders)

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create the opportunity for managers to sacrifice the firm’s interests in favour of their own

interests. Richard Cyert and James G. March analysed the behaviour of firms in terms of the

often conflicting interests and aspirations of individual decision makers. On this model the

tendency for individuals to satisfice rather than seek to maximize interests and the

compartmentalization of decisions into different stages to which different parts of the Decision

Making Unit are a party, serve to defuse these conflicts and prevent them from causing harm tothe organisation (Cyert and March, 1963).

Philip Kotler depicted the business purchase process in terms of conflicts between individuals

in his Hobbesian Organisational Factors model of business buying. Kotler named his model

after Thomas Hobbes, the C17th English philosopher. Hobbes viewed society comprising

individuals all pursuing their own interests and only curtailing this pursuit in favour of the

common good to the extent necessary to prevent all-out war which is ultimately against the

individual’s best interests. In the same way, Kotler claims, individuals who are party to apurchase decision seek their own interest up to, but not beyond, the point that it clearly

threatens the interests of the business as a whole (Kotler, 1967). Jagdish Sheth in his

integrative model of industrial buyer behaviour (see Figure 1. below) also gives an important

role to the personal background of the individual contributors to the decision (Sheth, 1973).

Figure 1. Sheth’s Integrative Model of Industrial Buying Behaviour (Sheth 1973)

Education Role orientation Life-style Situationalfactors

Individual background factors

Satisfactionwith purchase

Expectations ofcontributors to thepurchase decision

Industrial buyingprocess

Autonomousdecisions

Jointdecisions

Supplieror brandchoice

Conflictresolution

Timepressure

Perceivedrisk

Type ofpurchase

Organisationorientation

Organisationsize

Degree ofcentralisation

Product-specific factors Company-specific factors

Informationsources

• Salesmen

• Exhibitions

• Direct mail

• Advertising

• Conferences

• Word-of-mouth

Education Role orientation Life-style Situationalfactors





Autonomousdecisions

Jointdecisions


Conflictresolution

Timepressure

Perceivedrisk

Type ofpurchase

Organisationorientation

Organisationsize

Degree ofcentralisation

Product-specific factorsProduct-specific factors Company-specific factorsCompany-specific factors

Informationsources

• Salesmen

• Exhibitions

• Direct mail

• Advertising

• Conferences

Word-of-mouth•

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Sheth’s model has stood the test of time as a comprehensive framework for thinking about the

process of industrial buying. It highlights the importance not only of individual factors such as

education, role and lifestyle but also of the need for conflict resolution between different

individuals, factors related to the product type such as time pressure and risk and factors

related to the organisation such as its size and degree of centralization.

Business-consumer hybrid markets

In some business decisions the personal factors outlined in the previous section are the

dominant purchase criteria and appear to cross the boundary that divides business from

consumer concerns. These markets are sometimes called business-consumer hybrid markets.

The best established of these is the business air travel market. Criteria for purchase in thismarket include both business criteria such as price, the need to arrive in time for business

meetings and the ability to work during the flight, as well as a range of personal criteria. Some

of these personal criteria relate to work, such as the desire for the flight class to reflect the

traveller’s status within his or her organisation. But others such as the desire to earn personal

frequent flyer scheme points, buy duty free goods or get home quickly and spend time with

their families, are clearly consumer needs. In a study we conducted recently amongst business

members of a major airline’s frequent flyer club, consumer requirements such as comfort and

frequent flyer points were considered significantly more important than more business-like

considerations such as price or the company’s policy on travel.

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Figure 2. Mean importance of factors in selecting airline amongst frequent business flyers

(2006, on-line study)

8.8

8.1

7.8

7.7

7.1

6.3

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

In-flight comfort

Suitable date anddeparture time

Frequent flyerprogramme

Airline brand

Price

Corporate travel policy

Not at allimportant

Extremelyimportant

Base: n = 1015

The business air travel market illustrates the range of factors which give rise to the presence of

consumer purchasing criteria in business purchase decisions:− High value added / high status Users

− A legitimate claim on the part of the User for some form of ‘compensation’ which thepurchase can meet

− An asymmetry in knowledge and information between the User and other potentially

interested parties in the decision− A purchase category which, even considered from a strictly business perspective, has a

relatively ‘soft’ or intangible evaluative dimension

High value added / high status Users

High end knowledge workers and senior managers often have the necessary power within an

organisation to impose their consumer criteria on a business purchase. Figure 3. below shows

the results of a study conducted amongst frequent flyers (Mason and Gray, 1999). The data

show that more senior workers are able to fly in higher travel grades. Clearly, for very large,

strategic purchases high value-add and high status individuals do not have the same incentive

or the same latitude in imposing their personal preferences, much less their consumer

preferences. However, even in the case of these purchases, Users needs and personal

considerations may play a very important role. A recent study of strategic purchasing in the

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bio-technology industry, for example, concluded that the Users of the products purchased

(usually scientists within the organisation) were highly influential and were the main focus of

the decision-making process. Senior managers often kept the very final decision for

themselves but only as a perceived personal risk reduction strategy because they would be held

responsible for the outcome of the decision (Howard and Doyle, 2006).

Figure 3. Travel grade by corporate status for European and Intercontinental travel

(1999, self-completion study administered at Stansted airport)

European trave l

186100

53

53

4229

22

2941

5770

78

0%

Economy class

Business class

First class

Base: n = 827

Intercontinental travel

2712

421

53

61

4938

30

1926

4760

69

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

C o m p

a n y d i r e c

t o r s

S e n i o r

m a n a g e r s

O t h e r m a n a

g e r s

S u p e r

v i s o r s

N o n - s

u p e r v i

s o r y

A legitimate claim that ‘compensation’ is due to the User

Business travel involves the User staying away from home overnight or at the very least in along working day and is generally agreed to be quite tiring. This gives rise to a legitimate

claim for some form of compensation to make up for this perceived imposition on the User’s

personal time and resources – i.e. the organisation and the individual tacitly or explicitly agree

that some kind of personal compensation is due to the business traveller. Figure 3 supports this

notion. It shows that at all levels of seniority a higher grade of travel is used for longer,

intercontinental flights than for European, short haul flights. Intercontinental travel typically

involves more curtailment of the User’s personal time and resources and therefore a greater

level of compensation (in-flight comfort, room, frequent flyer points etc.) is allowed than is thecase with European travel.

An asymmetry in knowledge and information between the User and other potentially

interested parties in the decision

The business traveller has almost unique access to the information required to make the

purchase decision for his own travel. He is usually best placed to know where he needs to get

to and by when – the key information in booking business flights. The inaccessibility of this

20%

%

%

%

100%

C o m p

a n y d i r e c

t o r s

S e n i o r

m a n a g e r s

O t h e r m a n a

g e r s

S u p e r

v i s o r s

N o- s u p e r

v i s o r y

80

60

40

n

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information to others is reinforced by the fact that business travel often has to be booked at

fairly short notice – or at least it is difficult to prove that it does not have to be. Such is the

imbalance in information that most or all of the key DMU roles are concentrated in one

individual, the User. In the study we conducted amongst business members of the frequent

flyer club we found that over half of respondents had complete freedom in the choice of airline

and class of flight that they used and that less than a fifth of them had to follow company travelguidelines in all cases. In effect, for the majority of travel purchase decisions almost all key

DMU roles – Initiator, User, Influencer, Decider, Approver and Buyer – are fulfilled by one

individual, the business traveller. If they book their own flights on-line - an increasingly

common practice even amongst quite senior managers - then they are also the Gatekeepers of

the DMU as well.

A‘soft’ or intangible purchase category

Of course, a travel manager or buyer could insist on all flight booking coming through his orher function or could check retrospectively that the best possible deal was achieved from the

company’s point of view and challenge the purchase decision after the event. But there is a

further barrier to such intervention in the decision. Travel needs to be so tightly integrated with

the travellers schedule and his business-related needs that the traveller can always find a form

of justification for his or her decision. And the traveller’s ability to justify the flight chosen

from a business point of view is further reinforced by the fact that travel is an experiential and

therefore fairly intangible and subjective category. If a business traveller says that he can only

work on the plane if he has the room and comfort that he gets in First or Business Class, who

can really disprove this? He knows the conditions under which he can work. The companypurchasing department will not be accompanying him on the flight and probably does not fly

much for business anyway, so how can he challenge the travellers claim?

These four factors combine to make the decision for business air travel highly decentralized –

decentralized, in fact, to the point that virtually all DMU roles are concentrated in the User. In

the last decade the emergence of mobile communications markets has provided new examples

of such business-consumer hybrid markets. The most noteworthy of these are the mobile data

and PDA markets. The mobile data market is based on data cards which enable remote internetconnection through a laptop. PDAs are handheld devices such as the Blackberry, Handspring

Treo or Nokia Digital Communicator, which provide remote e-mail access and personal

organiser functionality. The mobile data and PDA markets are decentralised but not to the

same degree as the business air travel market. Table 1. below, shows how the business air

travel market and the Mobile data/ PDA markets compare in terms of the different dimensions

of business-consumer hybridity.

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Table 1. A comparison of the ‘Hybrid’ nature of the Business air travel and Mobile data/

PDA markets in larger businesses

Hybrid factors/ features Business air travelmarket

Mobile data/ PDAmarket

High value added / high status Users.

A legitimate claim on the part of the User for someform of ‘compensation’

Asymmetry in knowledge and information betweenthe User and other potentially interested parties

‘Soft’ or intangible evaluative dimension.

Degree of decentralization‘High’ - most/ all DMU

roles fulfilled byindividual travellers

‘Medium’ - User highlyinfluential but buyersand IT play key roles

The biggest difference between the two markets is in the number of individuals/ functions in

the DMU. By their very nature, mobile data and PDAs (certainly at the present state of the art)

require fairly high level technical co-ordination which draws the IT department into the DMU

as, at the very least an Influencer and probably in many cases as a Decider. In addition,

network providers are linked to equipment (PDA devices and data cards) due to the cross-

subsidization of handsets by the networks. Network services are hard to differentiate on

anything but price or price-package solutions and this brings the procurement or purchasing

function into the DMU. Typically, network and the available range of equipment is decided byprocurement and the IT function with the User having some influence, whereas specific

equipment used is either very strongly influenced or decided by Users.

Compensation in the mobile data or PDA market is usually given in return for the reduction in

downtime during the day and/or impingement on personal time which mobile server access

permits. The form that compensation takes in PDAs and related data devices relates to some

extent to the status effect of being seen with the latest device. Consumer features on the phone

– such as MP3 players, cameras, games and web browsers - can also serve a compensatory

function. The Blackberry Pearl range explicitly appeals to this consumer feature overlap,

incorporating consumer features such as camera, multi-media player and colour screen and

with the tagline ‘It’s a pity just to use it for work’. The Nokia E-range also straddles the

business and consumer divide. Under the general heading of ‘Tailored for Business’ the

range’s core function is around e-mail and internet use for business. But one of the three

phones in the range, the E65, explicitly appeals to consumer benefits, inviting Users to

‘Indulge’ in the stainless steel and leather design and ‘Capture’ moments in business and

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private life with a 2 megapixel camera.

Both data cards and PDAs also offer another benefit which straddles business and consumer

needs: the ability to manage work-life balance. Vodafone’s Wireless office campaign very

clearly appeals to this benefit (see Figure 4 below).

Figure 4. Vodafone’s Wireless Office campaign (JWT)

PDAs and data cards enable workers to manage the conflict between work and personal life

more effectively, by giving them greater ‘time sovereignty’ – i.e. greater control over when,

where and how they work. One of the key challenges for knowledge workers is to make room

whilst at work for leisure and family time. Preparing for leisure often involves additional work

and stress. PDAs and data cards enable the user to make the most of his working day –reducing downtime during office hours. It also allows a degree of flexibility and choice about

where the preparation for leisure time takes place. The user can, for example, still make it

back in time to see their children before they go to bed and then resume work or answer e-

mails later in the evening, rather than having to try to squeeze all the work into the standard

working day in order to be home at a reasonable time. The Work Foundation claims that the

greater time sovereignty individuals have the more productive they are because they suffer

from lower levels of stress (The Work Foundation, 2007).

A number of forces are at work in business and society now which seem likely to encourage

the spread of the business-consumer hybrid market, or aspects of it, to a wider range of sectors

and product categories. It is to these trends that we now turn, starting with trends in business,

and the largest and most important of these trends, the decentralization of decision-making

facilitated by the reduction in communication costs.

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Trends driving the spread of personal criteria in business purchasing:I. business trends

Decentralisation and the declining cost of communication

We are in the middle of a seemingly permanent communications revolution. Since the 1980’s

new mobile and fixed line technologies have resulted in a sharp decline in the costs of communication. These cost reductions have had a ‘flattening’, decentralizing effect in industry,

redistributing power in businesses and regions from the core to the periphery, from the top of

organisations to the levels below, and eliminating mediating hierarchies. The latest stage in the

revolution, the spread of broadband communications brought about by the massive

infrastructure investments of the Dot.com boom, has led one commentator to claim that ‘the

world is flat’ – i.e. that geographical boundaries no longer represent any barrier to industrial

location and virtually any function can be outsourced to distant labour markets (Friedman,

2006). Developments such as Web 2.0 promise to perpetuate this revolution.

In businesses this reduction in communication costs has facilitated the spread of flatter, more

heterarchical organisational structures with decentralized, intrapreneurial cultures replacing

simple, formal lines of reporting and narrowly demarcated roles. One study of 300 large US

firms found that between 1984 and 1999 the number of positions reporting directly to CEOs

had increased significantly, businesses had delayered and more employees received incentives

such as shares and stock options (Rajan and Wulf, 2002).

Thomas Malone of the MIT Sloan School of Management views this wave of transformationsin business as recapitulating a pattern already seen in the way human societies are organised

(Malone, 2004). The shared pattern is as follows:

1. Societies and organisations start off as small isolated units – hunter gatherer ‘bands’ in the

case of societies or small workshops/ firms in the case of companies. Individuals in these

small groups are highly motivated and enterprising and, up to a point, are in control of their

own lives. However, they are relatively insecure and poor.

2. As communication costs come down societies and businesses centralize – forming

kingdoms and nations or larger corporations. The lowering of communications costsfacilitates this centralization process but it is driven by human values, wants and

aspirations. In the case of societies the benefits of bigness are greater protection, more

food and access to economic goods: in the case of businesses the benefits to employees are

stability and job security and the benefits to employers are economies of scale. These gains

from bigness outweigh the loss of individual freedom and motivation that comes with

greater centralization.

3. As communication costs continue to come down societies and businesses start to

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decentralize, again – societies start to democratize, moving from feudal hierarchies to more

democratic states; businesses start to delayer, empower employees and outsource functions

to other organisations. The motive force here, again, is human desires and wants. In

societies subjects want the greater freedom and control over their lives that is due to

citizens . In businesses employees want more ownership (of problems and profits) and

authority to make their own decisions, and employers want the greater staff motivation andproductivity that can be achieved by empowering the workforce in this way (numerous

studies confirm that greater empowerment leads to improved motivation and productivity

amongst knowledge workers - see, for example, Amabile et al, 1986). The reduced costs of

communication enable societies and businesses to reap the benefits of both bigness and

smallness. In business this means that communications technology enables companies and

individuals to benefit from both economies of scale and enhanced personal control and

motivation.

For it to be worthwhile businesses decentralizing in this way, the benefits of decentralization,

such as improved motivation and more responsive local decision making, have to outweigh the

costs of losing central control. This means that it is more likely that decentralization will

actually occur in businesses, or in parts of businesses, where local decisions made by

knowledge workers can contribute to significant increases in efficiency or effectiveness, than

in other areas of business. Paradoxically, the use of certain minimum, rigid, central controls or

processes can allow a greater degree of decentralization by mitigating the risks of inefficiency

or loss of economies of scale. For example, guidelines and approved supplier lists

communicated through internal servers, or IT applications to facilitate internal buying groups,can allow individuals to make their own purchase decisions whilst continuing to benefit from

the buying power of a large organisation.

Malone cites a number of examples of companies which have already decentralized decision-

making in significant ways. Cisco Systems, for example, permits all employees to make their

own expense purchase decisions via an Intranet booking site and special credit card. Provided

selections fall within certain purchase guidelines managers are not involved in any part of the

decision. But he claims that these instances are just the beginning of a long-term trend whichwill result in widespread decentralization either in the form of more empowered employees,

greater outsourcing to smaller companies or networks of small companies and a growth in

partnerships and democratic co-operatives.

Businesses will have a strong incentive to decentralize decision-making wherever the

motivation and creativity of large numbers of employees is vital and where the need for

communication between remote parts of the business is high. This will be found wherever

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knowledge workers benefit from coming together and sharing expertise and information in

large organisations. However, central decision-making is likely to be retained wherever:- Resolving conflicts is key – especially when industries or businesses are contracting and

difficult prioritization choices need to be made;- A central, holistic vision is required to drive the development of a business – such was the

case with Bill Gates and Microsoft’s decision to pursue Internet in the mid 1990’s;- Employees do not have the skills to make the decisions – the decentralizing trend will, at

least in its early stages, be confined to knowledge workers and high value added

employees.

Another factor which favours decentralization which Malone does not highlight explicitly, is

the degree to which a business is focused on large-scale project work. The commercial and

civil engineering construction industry, for example, has always been highly decentralized,

depending on shifting alliances of contractors and sub-contractors to undertake huge projects,usually with considerable lead time and lengthy project times. The film industry is another

such example. The long lead times and project durations in these industries mean that there has

never been any real advantage to centralization. But in many quite highly centralized

industries the constantly changing competitive and commercial environment is leading to a

situation of nearly constant change management. In these conditions the work of the

organisation does become rather like a collection of overlapping projects drawing together

individuals from different functions as the business aims to adapt its structures and processes to

emerging challenges. This situation, of course, favours decentralization.

Decentralization can take many forms in business. It could just result in the delayering and

flattening of the existing organisational hierarchy, with more people reporting directly to the

top of the organisation. It could manifest itself in the form of outsourcing functions to smaller

companies or outsourcing the workforce to individual contractors or freelancers. Malone even

cites examples of companies experimenting with internal markets, with functions and

employees in a single organisation buying and selling their services to one another.

If Malone’s predictions about the growth of decentralization are correct, then we are likely tosee more purchase decisions being made by employees at or close to the point of use, based on

their personal purchase criteria. These personal criteria may well be moderated by central

purchasing guidelines, constrained by corporate culture or the competing power of peers within

the organisation, but increasingly it will be individual Users making decisions that they feel,

for whatever reasons, they can work and live with.

The other, more dramatic, implication of Malone’s work is that organisations may actually get

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smaller and that therefore we will increasingly be marketing to and researching smaller

businesses. Though Malone notes that the evidence for this is at present ambiguous.

The increasingly complex and intangible nature of many business supplies

As the knowledge economy becomes more and more sophisticated the nature of the supplies

that businesses buy and sell becomes more complex and the purchasing criteria become moreintangible. This increases the asymmetry in knowledge and information between Users and

other centralizing functions such as purchasing or procurement which makes it more likely that

Users will buy on personal criteria. The situation we saw with business air travel, where it is

virtually impossible for a central purchasing function to challenge a business traveller about the

carrier and class of flight they need in order to optimize their productivity, is likely to become

more common. Of course not all business buying decisions have the same degree of consumer

experiential content that air travel does. In the Bio-tech industry example cited earlier, the

types of products and services being bought and sold would not generally include anythingresembling consumer benefits. However, the one consumer benefit that could be implicated in

virtually any complex business purchase is leisure time and the peace of mind required to

enjoy it. And as we shall see leisure time is now a commodity with a very high value attached

to it.

The growth in importance of relationships with suppliers

As advanced economies become more dependent on the outsourcing of intangible and complex

products and services, the importance of relationships between supplier contacts and Users

increases. Such relationships are likely to contain a strong personal and emotional element.The intangible nature of the evaluation criteria for these products and services, the technical

complexity that generally accompanies them and the power and influence of the high value-

added individuals who are the Users of these categories make it very difficult for centralized

purchasing functions to intervene in such purchases.

The personal element is not sufficient, of course. If a supplier does a bad job, even if you like

them personally, you probably won’t use them again. But if two suppliers can do an equally

good job and you get on with one but personally dislike the other, you are very likely to use theone you get on with – unless you suspect that the relationship could in the future affect the

quality of your purchasing decisions. That’s not bad business practice or a lack of

professionalism it’s just common sense. Once the business criteria have been given due weight

even the most professional and conscientious ‘company man’ is free to choose on the most

personal and subjective criteria.

But in practice personal buying criteria are actually likely to play a much larger role than

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simply being the deciding factor between suppliers who are evenly matched on ‘hard’ and

conclusive business criteria, because it is very difficult to gather data about and compare

suppliers on such empirical dimensions. As we saw in the discussion of the myths of business

purchasing, people generally do not seek to maximize value as they are in no position to do

this. Rather they seek to satisfice - using emotion-laden heuristics to achieve an acceptable

level of value in the limited time, and with the limited information, available to them. Suchemotion-guided strategies are very prone to ‘hijacking’ by strictly irrelevant considerations

based on prior assumptions and prejudices. Malcolm Gladwell in his book ‘Blink’, gives some

excellent examples of this, such as the election to the Whitehouse in the 1920’s of Warren

Harding – the least successful President in history - on the basis that he conformed exactly to

people’s stereotype of what a President of the United states should look like (Gladwell, 2005).

Gladwell also notes that some people can embed sophisticated learning in these ‘thin sliced’

judgments by noting correlations between initial cues and final outcomes. Gladwell gives the

example of a highly successful car salesman who rather than relying on the crude class, age,race and gender stereotypes that other salesman find it hard to see around has developed in the

course of his long experience very subtle filters for those customers who are worth putting

effort into and those who aren’t. But this ability is fairly rare.

This tendency for satisficing behaviour means that personal buying considerations can go to

the very heart of supplier selection decisions. As we have seen, risk aversion is a key

consideration in many business purchases. Trust in a supplier is the main way to avoid risk.

There are a number of strategies for assessing whether you should trust a supplier. The ones

that figure most highly in surveys of business purchasing are the buyer’s past experience of having used a supplier and, the next best thing, the recommendation of someone else who has

used the supplier and who you trust. Another important strategy relies on indirect indicators or

‘cues’ to aspects of quality that cannot be directly assessed. Very often there is a strong

underlying rationale for using these cues because the indicator used is something that is

instrumental to the ultimate purchase objective. For example, the presence of local office may

be taken as a cue to quality in an international offering because a local office can be seen as

instrumental in delivering quality in international work – through better logistics, cultural

understanding, and so on. The cues that people find it most easy to rely on in establishingwhether to trust are social and emotional ones such as openness and friendliness. Most people

are not that adept at training their assumptions and so the best short-cut method they have for

making judgments about who to trust is who they feel personally comfortable with. When

direct prior experience, the recommendations of others or conclusive ‘hard’ evidence of quality

is lacking, interpersonal ‘fit’ is likely to be an important criterion for most Decision-makers.

This is particularly true where the User has to work closely with the supplier on an ongoing

basis because in such cases the User is constantly exposed to the interpersonal dynamic with

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his or her contacts in the supplier organisation. Because this way of establishing trust comes

quite naturally to us we are sometime unaware of how much we rely on it. Thus, respondents

often play down the importance of personal and emotional factors in their purchase decisions

when asked directly.

The growing importance of Corporate Social Responsibility The growing importance of CSR is likely to broaden the range of situations for which

employees can legitimately seek some form of informal compensation through their buying

behaviour. If the range of purchases that Users are allowed to make directly does increase,

then the widening scope of definitions of health and safety should release new consumer-type

demand in business markets. For example, increased sensitivity to ergonomic and physical

stress issues in office working environments could result in Users playing a far larger role in

purchasing for products such as office furniture, PCs and computer peripherals and telecoms

equipment. Users could even start to become involved in more ambient aspects of the workingenvironment such as interior décor, ambient sound and so on.

In parallel with these business trends there are a range of social developments that will favour

the spread of personal criteria in business purchasing.

Trends driving the spread of personal criteria in business purchasing:II. wider social trends

Growing concerns over quality of life and work-life balanceThe leisure age people were promised 50 years ago has, in many ways, failed to materialize.

People are not working shorter hours than they did 50 years ago and the amount that we ‘have’

to do in the time when we are not at work has increased significantly. The range of options for

entertainment has increased significantly: foreign holidays are now commonplace; most people

have access to 20 or more TV channels; eating out is far more common than it used to be.

Raised consumer aspirations generally necessitate two wages coming into a household rather

than the more traditional model of a breadwinner who works and a home maker who stays at

home. This means that child rearing takes up more of people’s free time. And raising childrennow is a professional occupation all of its own. There used to be very few ways you could let

your children down: now there are dozens! Amidst this collision of consumer aspirations,

parental duties and multiplying means of distraction, we worry about our quality of life:

universal liberal education has led us to expect something more than ‘bread and circuses’. We

want time to reflect and consider our direction in life and our place in the universe.

But work can exert considerable pressure on the time that we want to keep for ourselves.

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Flexible labour markets have increasingly blurred the boundaries between work and personal

life. People now are less secure in their jobs than they were 30 years ago and this makes

working hours very sensitive to competitive factors. This can be seen in the comparison of the

unemployment rate and the % of employees working more than 45 hours per week shown in

Figure 5 below.

Figure 5. The UK unemployment rate and the % employees working more than 45 hours

per week – 1987 – 2006 (seasonally adjusted)

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

1 9 8 7

Q 1

1 9 8 8

Q 1

1 9 8 9

Q 1

1 9 9 0

Q 1

1 9 9 1

Q 1

1 9 9 2

Q 1

1 9 9 3

Q 1

1 9 9 4

Q 1

1 9 9 5

Q 1

1 9 9 6

Q 1

1 9 9 7

Q 1

1 9 9 8

Q 1

1 9 9 9

Q 1

2 0 0 0

Q 1

2 0 0 1

Q 1

2 0 0 2

Q 1

2 0 0 3

Q 1

2 0 0 4

Q 1

2 0 0 5

Q 1

2 0 0 6

Q 1

U n e m p

l o y m e n

t r a

t e

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

% w

o r k i n g o v e r

4 5 h o u r s

Unemployment rate

% employees working over 45 hours per week

Source: Office for National Statistics

The figures show that working hours increase with unemployment – though this effect islagged, presumably because it takes time for the labour market to adjust. Thus, when work is

scarce people will be prepared to work longer hours, either to keep their jobs or to keep up with

others around them who are working longer hours in response to the rising expectations laid of

their employers. This suggests that wherever competition for employment or preferment in

work is high, there is likely to be increased pressure to work longer hours.

17



The upshot of all this is that downtime has become a personal commodity in virtually the same

way that man hours are an industrial commodity. And these two are competing with each other.

Drawing Sheth’s model of industrial buying behaviour now, we have to note the considerable

tension between the lifestyle and time pressure factors.

Figure 6. Sheth’s Integrative Model of Industrial Buying Behaviour updated for theC21st !

EducationRole orientationLife-style Situationalfactors





Autonomousdecisions

Jointdecisions


Conflictresolution

Time

pressure

Perceived

risk

Type of

purchase

Organisation

orientation

Organisation

size

Degree of

centralisation

Product-specific factors Company-specific factors

Informationsources

• Salesmen

• Exhibitions

• Direct mail

• Advertising

• Conferences

• Word-of-mouth

EducationRole orientationLife-style Situationalfactors





Autonomousdecisions

Jointdecisions


Conflictresolution

Time

pressure

Perceived

risk

Type of

purchase

Organisation

orientation

Organisation

size

Degree of

centralisation

Product-specific factorsProduct-specific factors Company-specific factorsCompany-specific factors

Informationsources

• Salesmen

• Exhibitions

• Direct mail

• Advertising

• Conferences

• Word-of-mouth

Users of business products and services are increasingly confronted with a trade-off between

the time they spend doing their job and the time they spend with their families, or in

recreational activities. Business products and services which can credibly promise to save

Users time at work and make more time for home life and leisure are likely to meet a deeply

felt and increasingly widespread need.

Increased consumer sophistication

People in all walks of life have become increasingly exposed to hard commercial realities at

work. Everything now is run the way the best businesses are run: costs are driven out;

students, pupils, patients, passengers and voters are ‘customers’ to be competed for with other

organisations; commercial accountability or some proxy for it can be found in all workplaces.

An increasingly business-literate population is applying the same techniques they have had to

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use at work, in other aspects of their personal life. We have all become more caught up with

machine logic. 30 years ago ‘machine operator’ was a job performed by a few: now it’s a way

of life for everyone, with all that entails for the way people think and make choices about the

world. The internet has facilitated more rational purchasing techniques amongst consumers,

enabling them to put virtually any product or service category out to tender in much the same

way as a business buyer would. The effect of this has been to blur the boundary between work and personal life. At work people can move seamlessly between ordering their groceries or

paying their utilities bills to making business purchases. From the individual’s perspective the

differences in process between consumer and business purchasing are being rapidly eroded.

Greater sensitivity to health issues

The historian of science, Roy Porter, in the introduction to his global history of medicine

noted:

‘These are strange times, when we are healthier than ever but more anxious about our health.’

(Porter, 1997)

Concern about health links work and personal lives in a very direct way. This link is also

highly asymmetric – that is, it is hard for central functions such as purchasing or even HR to

challenge claims that an individual makes about their health. Thus, increased concern about,

and sensitivity towards, health matters has provided a new and growing basis for the kind of

compensation we identified earlier. There is growing momentum behind the view that long

hours and low levels of time sovereignty produce stress which reduces productivity (see TheWork Foundation, 2007). Awareness of this fact combined with the Corporate Social

Responsibility trend will increasingly drive the demand for informal compensation, on the

legitimate business grounds that stress reduces productivity and can be managed to a large

degree by giving employees greater control over their conditions of work. This compensation

could take the form of more flexible working practices or more working environments which

are more closely tailored to individual requirements.

Implications for B2b Marketing and Research Practice

We have identified various types of convergence between consumer and B2b purchasing: the

basic psychology of decision-making in both is similar; personal factors lead to power

struggles within organisations around business purchase decisions; purchasing in markets such

as the business air travel market display distinct consumer features; and trends in business and

wider society will, over time, increase the range of B2b markets which exhibit these consumer

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traits.

We have seen that the types of B2b purchase that will be subject to this convergence with

consumer purchasing will be those where:- The Users of the product or service are high value-added or high status knowledge workers

- The User has a legitimate claim to informal ‘compensation’ relating to long or anti-socialhours or a health related issue

- Local decisions made by these knowledge workers can contribute to significant increases in

efficiency or effectiveness- The business is focused on project work - There is an asymmetry in knowledge and information between the User and other

potentially interested parties in the decision such as the purchasing function- The purchase category is ‘soft’ or intangible – especially where the User has ongoing

regular, service contact with the supplier

There are three key implications for B2B research and marketing practice, of the types of

convergence we have been exploring. These can be summarized as follows:- Assess the power and legitimacy in the decision-making unit.- Find the ‘soft’ emotional-personal cues to ‘hard’ business purchase criteria.- Appeal to the whole purchaser.

Below we consider each of these in turn:

Assessing power and legitimacy in the decision-making unit.As purchase decisions decentralize they politicize. If one man at the top of the organisation

makes all the decisions, the question of conflicting interests or the need to compromise

between these interests does not arise. When the decision is decentralized across a range of

individuals or functions, the interests of many of these functions is held in check by the

limited, advisory role that they play. These disinterested parties can then play a moderating

role between the interested parties – usually, different Users and the Decision-Maker or Buyer,

where these roles are fulfilled by different individuals. This impartiality can take the heat out

of the decision and the need to take on board the views of those in a purely advisory capacitycan serve as force for compromise. When the decision decentralizes to the point that only a

User and a Buyer are involved, and the question of which of these gets to play the role of the

Decision-maker arises, expect some serious tension. We see this in our own industry in the

tussles between, on the one hand, increasingly powerful internal research departments,

concerned with maintaining working relationships with trusted research suppliers across a

range of specialisms, and on the other, newly empowered procurement departments seeking

economies of scale and reduced costs of doing business by working with a smaller number of

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larger providers.

When faced with such decentralized decision-making units, researchers need to be alert to the

details of tactical compromises and political maneouvering as well as the ‘big picture’ of who

actually has the greater power and influence in the relationship. Stakeholder theory provides

us with a framework for thinking about this (Mason and Gray, 1999). To be a stakeholder in adecision is to have a vested interest or legitimate claim in that decision and to actively pursue

that interest or claim. Stakeholders can be individuals or functions within the organisation.

But the organisation as whole may also be a stakeholder – i.e. the notional entity that

represents the collective interests of the organisation. Particular functions or individuals may

represent the organisation with regards to particular decisions (whilst also representing their

own interests) or the organisation’s interests may be embedded in buying guidelines or rules –

though, again, these may have been created by a function or individual to serve their own best

interests.

A stakeholder or stakeholder group may co-operate with another stakeholder in the interests of

the organisation as a whole or on the basis of another shared, but more self-interested motive.

Or a stakeholder may compete with another stakeholder and when in competition may have

power over that stakeholder or may lack power relative to them. If a stakeholder lacks power

relative to another stakeholder he or she may still have a legitimate claim that overrides any

power dynamic. With respect to any single purchasing decision a User may be doing all of

these simultaneously. For example, the business air traveller may willingly co-operate with a

travel manager who is helping him book his flight and be in competition with, but slightlylacking in power with respect to, the procurement function. But he may still be able to achieve

many of his consumer objectives with regards to his travel purchase because of the perceived

legitimacy of his claims to travel business or first class – either on the compensatory grounds

that he is being kept away from home for a long period of time or on the business-related

grounds that he needs to work while traveling.

Mapping these power dynamics and identifying the source of stakeholders’ power and

legitimacy with respect to a particular decision is key to understanding who marketers shouldtarget within an organisation and what criteria the final decision will be based on.

Finding the ‘soft’ emotional-personal cues to ‘hard’ business purchase criteria.

As we have seen personal, emotional impressions are likely to play a key role in business

decisions just as they are in consumer decisions. Thus, it is important for research to be alive

to these emotional, personal cues to quality that Users and Buyers rely on. In qualitative

research the importance of the personal dimension can be probed in depth and can be

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identified, if not in what respondents actually say, then in how they talk about their individual

contacts in the supplier organisation. Quantitative research runs the risk of overlooking the

importance of the emotional-personal dimension by being too literal and direct. A recent US

study into B2b customers’ requirements of salespeople falls into this trap. The study was

conducted amongst 120 ‘sales leaders’ in vendor organisations and 200 of their customers

(Kreindler and Rajguru, 2006). The results of the study are shown below.

Table 2. Results from a survey of US vendors and their customers (Kreindler and

Rajguru, 2006)

Rank byimportance

What customers reallyexpect

What vendors thinkcustomers expect

What vendors actuallyrecruit for

1 Subject matter and solutionexpertise Professionalism Social and communication

skills

2 Understanding of customer'sbusiness and industry

Understanding of customer'sbusiness and industry

Organisational and decision-making skills

3 Professionalism Subject matter and solutionexpertise

Subject matter and solutionexpertise

4 Consultative skills andcreativity

Social and communicationskills Professionalism

5 Organisational and decision-making skills

Consultative skills andcreativity

Understanding of customer'sbusiness and industry

6 Social and communicationskills

Organisational and decision-making skills

Consultative skills andcreativity

The authors claim that the results show there is a serious misalignment between the customers’

expectations of salespeople and what vendors think customers expect and recruit for.

Customers rank social and communication skills as the least important of the attributes show

whilst vendors think their customers rank social and communications skills more highly and

actually rank these skills most highly when recruiting salespeople. Kreindler and Rajguru

believe that it is understandable that vendors recruit salespeople based on their social andcommunication skills as it is difficult in an interview to assess more important factors such as

subject matter and solution expertise and professionalism. But they do not explain why it is

any easier for customers to make judgments about the salesperson’s expertise and

professionalism during their fairly brief interactions with them than it is for vendors during the

course of a job interview. In fact, it is likely that the customer’s priorities are rather closer to

the vendor’s priorities than the rankings suggest. It is just that different psychological biases

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are operating on customers and vendors when they are responding to the survey and this is

producing very different rankings.

Kreindler and Rajguru fail to make the important distinction between instrumental and final

factors, between quality and the available indicators of quality. Social and communication

skills are an instrumental factor in a salesperson because if they are poor communicators, thecustomer will never find out how expert they are or how well they understand the customer’s

business and industry. Vendors focus on this when recruiting salesmen because they know that

all the expertise and understanding in the world is useless in a salesperson if he cannot

communicate it. But when customers are interviewed they are likely to play down the

importance of social and communication skills. This is probably partly because they want to

be seen as rational purchasers, partly because they are wary of slick, persuasive salesmen

selling them something they don’t want and partly because they are just not consciously aware

of how reliant they are on the salesperson possessing these skills.

Getting a more balanced picture through quantitative research of the importance of ‘soft’,

emotional-personal attributes in B2B markets requires a more indirect approach than that taken

by Kreindler and Rajguru. Correlation techniques can be particularly effective in this respect.

By identifying attributes which are connected in customers’ minds it can help to highlight

which ‘softer’ personal-emotional attributes might be used buy customers as cues for other

‘harder’, rational attributes.

Table 3. below shows results from a survey of 600 UK car dealers. The figures show themean importance rating of each attribute on a scale of 1-4 where: 1 = Not at all important; 2 =

Not that important, but nice to have; 3 = Important, but not critically so; 4 = Critically

important.

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Table 3. Importance of factors in meeting the financing needs of car dealers

Speed of response to general enquiries 3.74Overall flexibility of underwriting criteria 3.71Rapid provision of contractual documentation 3.70Time taken to provide fund payments 3.70Clarity & accuracy of documentation 3.68Dealing with complaints to my satisfaction 3.68Ability to solve problems 3.63Expertise and credibility of staff 3.62Having a long-term, ongoing business relationship 3.60Expertise and credibility of area rep. 3.60Ability to take ownership of problems 3.59Rapid decision to lend for non-standard proposals 3.57Friendliness and politeness of staff 3.57Appears eager to do business 3.56Availability of area rep. when you need them 3.55Reps. take ownership of problems 3.52Ability to deal with non-standard proposals 3.51Knowledge and understanding of my business 3.45Continuity of contact (dealing with the same people) 3.44Decision making authority 3.42Availability of weekend service 3.36Informing me about new products and services 3.29Provision of sales training support 2.75

When asked directly, respondents place ‘softer’ interpersonal factors such as having a long-

term business relationship, friendliness and politeness and continuity of contact below ‘harder’

attributes such as speed of response to enquiries and dealing with complaints. However,

conducting a factor analysis in the data reveals some interesting links between these hard and

soft attributes. Table 4, below shows the results of this analysis. The figures indicate the

component loadings on the individual variables.

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Table 4. Principal components analysis of factors in meeting the financing needs of car

dealers

Components

Responsiveness

underwritten byrelationshipwith people

Flexiblility

and speed of lendingdecisions

Localresponsivenessand ownership

Nice-to-haves

Expertise and credibility of staff 0.693Knowledge and understanding of my business 0.643Friendliness and politeness of staff 0.639Having a long-term, ongoing business relationship 0.625Dealing with complaints to my satisfaction 0.559Speed of response to general enquiries 0.534Continuity of contact (dealing with the same people) 0.505Overall flexibility of underwriting criteria 0.676Rapid decisions to lend for non-standard proposals 0.668

Ability to deal with non-standard proposals 0.641Rapid provision of contractual documentation 0.610Time taken to provide fund payments 0.597Clarity & accuracy of documentation 0.484Ability to take ownership of problems 0.473Ability to solve problems 0.658Availability of area rep. when you need them 0.656Expertise and credibility of area rep. 0.655Reps. take ownership of problems 0.607Decision making authority of area rep 0.497Appears eager to do business 0.486

Informing me about new products and services 0.594Provision of sales training support 0.519Availability of weekend service 0.488

The factor analysis reveals a correlation (and therefore, potentially, an instrumental

relationship) between, on the one hand, softer attributes such as friendliness and politeness of

staff and continuity of contact and, on the other hand, harder attributes such as dealing with

complaints and speed of response to general enquiries. This seems to indicate that even though

they rate them on average as less important, customers in this market do attach importance to

these more emotional-personal attributes as indicators of a good relationship with a supplierwhich is instrumental in delivering the more concrete, business benefits that the customer is

ultimately interested in.

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Appealing to the whole purchaser

As purchase decision-making decentralizes and personal considerations move higher up the

mix of buying criteria, there will be a growing need for B2B marketers to appeal to the key

stakeholders in a holistic way, taking account of any potential personal or consumer needs they

may have which may be relevant to their interest in the product or service. If we call an

individual who brings professional-level expertise to his or her consumer purchases a‘prosumer’, then by the same logic we can perhaps call someone who introduces consumer

criteria into business purchases a ‘confessional’. This name has the advantage of drawing our

attention to the problem facing researchers and marketers when dealing with these individuals

– getting them to confess to the fact that consumer considerations do, in fact, play a part in

their purchase decisions. Identifying these consumer-type needs and marketing to them, has to

be sensitively handled for a number of reasons:- The individuals concerned do not want to be thought of as unprofessional. Indeed in many

business purchasers make a point of wanting to be treated differently from consumers inthe same category – even though, they actually share many of the objectives of an ordinary

consumer when making a purchase.- The perceived legitimacy of a consumer-motivated purchase may depend to some degree

on an asymmetry in the knowledge they have and other interested parties have about the

purchase. Most would be reluctant to openly admit to other people in their company that

they were motivated in making a decision by consumer-like considerations. Most will seek

to justify their decision on business grounds and may not even be fully aware of the extent

to which their decision is motivated by their own self-interest.

For researchers, getting business Buyers to admit to having consumer motives will involve

adapting techniques from researchers in ‘sensitive’ categories such as healthcare. These

techniques could include:- Use of depth interviews at a studio location rather than group discussions or depth

interviews at the respondent’s place of work. This should help to lower the respondent’s

guard and free him or her up to admit to any consumer factors which play a part in his or

her decision.-

Use of projective techniques. These can be useful in making respondents aware of latentmotives in themselves and for providing them with ‘room’ to admit to motives that they

would not otherwise want to admit. Two techniques in particular can be effective with

business audiences: laddering and ‘ideal world’ approach. The latter can be particularly

effective as it removes real world constraints such as cost which often constrain consumer

objectives in business buying contexts.- The use of other ‘permission giving’ techniques such as shifting personal to common views

and sharing disclosures. Leading the respondent to believe that other the interviewer or

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other people the interviewer knows engages in a similar type of behaviour can remove a

respondent’s inhibitions to admitting to behaviour that they are reluctant to share.

For marketers the main challenge is to imply that a personal or consumer benefit is available to

Users without straying far into consumer territory or language. One method for doing this is to

use language that is business-consumer neutral. For example, the Kodak ad aimed at hospitaladministrators shown in Figure 7, below, uses the phrase ‘life’ in the line ‘Simplify your life

with Kodak’ in a way which can be interpreted to mean both ‘work life’ and ‘personal life’

Figure 7. Kodak ad targeted at Hospital Administrators: example of business-consumer

neutral language

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Another approach is to show the key business scene from a narrative and let the audience

complete the story for themselves. In the Microsoft Office ads in Figure 8 below, one ending

to the story that many overworked business Users will fill in for themselves will be that these

people are not going to get home on time tonight.

Figure 8. Microsoft Office ad: an example of implying personal benefits

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