Abstract:

This paper is part of an international study. It discusses the behaviour of purchasing managers and the people they interact with throughout the purchasing process. After a brief description of the methodology used, the first part focuses on the behaviour of French purchasing managers in the paper/chemical industry. It shows that purchasing behaviours vary vastly according to the type of goods acquired, as well as to the importance of the purchasing decision for the firm's operations. The decision power of the purchasing manager varies accordingly. To people who aim at selling raw materials or industrial goods, it means the choice of the right interlocutor in the client company is of great importance. It also means it is not necessarily the best choice to have only one interlocutor in a single firm. The second part of the paper compares French results with previous results obtained in Canada and Hungary Behaviour differences between the three countries are not very great. Yet France is not more similar to either Hungary or Canada on the whole. It largely depends on the type of goods sold.