The influence of occupational communities on buyer behavior

In this paper, we propose a broader conceptualization of buyer behavior that takes into consideration the role occupational communities and cultures play in the interpretation of industrial marketers’ communications and in the formation of opinions about products, suppliers and solutions. From a theoretical point of view, our paper is grounded in the literature on occupational communities – which is an influential research stream within social sciences, organization studies and industrial relations – and in consumer culture theory – which has highlighted the relevance for marketing theory and practice of variously defined communities of consumers. Methodologically, this paper proposes the adoption of interpretive methods that require researcher field-work and socialization into the occupational community to be investigated. On the managerial side, we show that key marketing decisions, including segmentation, positioning and targeting, may be improved when adopting an occupational community theoretical perspective.