Omni Case Study

Omni Automated Systems has over 40 years of experience in manufacturing state of the art electronic assembly equipment. The company sells equipment to electronics manufacturers. Bob Waters is a field sales engineer working for Omni and he has received news that he has lost a sale with Gentech Office Equipment Company. Gentech manufactures a variety of office equipment. They have recently fallen behind in the industry and have experienced market share and profit margin erosion. In order to turn this around they are looking to revamp, modernize, and automate its manufacturing facilities. They will need a new soldering line to automate their manufacturing and are looking to purchase a robotic test cell. Steve Anderson is the purchasing agent for this new product. What makes this case unique is that Bob Waters and Steve Anderson are very close friends, but Gentech did not buy the robotic tetst cell from Omni, they went with their competitor.

Gentech Office Equipment Company is looking to purchase a robotic test cell in February of 2010. There are four forces that influence the organizational buying behavior of this company. The four forces are environmental, organizational, group, and individual forces. Each force plays a part in the decision making process.

Environmental forces influence and create change in business conditions and impact organizational buying plans. Pricing is going to be Gentech's primary factor in selecting a vendor. This could be possibly because of the economic environment and recession at this time. It has influenced their willingness to buy at a particular price and they are more price-conscious at this time. Also technological changes are what have motivated Gentech to revamp their operations and go with a more advanced, automated manufacturing facility.

Organizational forces influence buying because there is a potential organizational hierarchy and competition to take into consideration. An understanding of the buying organization is based on its strategic priorities, the role of purchasing in the executive hierarchy, and the firms' competitive challenges. Eight other firms were competing with Omni and making proposals. Detailed specifications for the test cell would not be available for the preliminary bid phase. They will provide those specifications only when the vendors submit their final bids.

Group forces influence buying because there may be a complex set of smaller decisions made or influenced by several individuals. The degree of involvement of each member varies. Three questions are taken into consideration when a decision is being considered, which organizational members take part in the buying process, what is each member's relative influence in the decision, and what criteria are important to each. All of the deciders from Gentech worked as a group on the purchasing decision each had an involvement and came to a decision as a group.

Individuals from the