Distinguishing Characteristics of Buying Situations

When decision makers encounter the new task, they have to deal with situation they have no experience with and therefore they will need to gather a lot of information. They will also look for and consider many different alternatives before making their final decision. (Ibid)

Buyers dealing with the modified rebuy already have relevant buying experience, but they need to gain new information about the changed task and some new alternatives are sought for, in case there is a possibility to increase return by that. (Ibid)

In the straight rebuy, the task is routinized, decision makers do not usually seek for new information nor for new suppliers, even though the specification of the purchase can differ. These variations however do not cause the change of supplier. (Ibid)

Although this concept was identified in 1967, it is still accepted in the literature and authors (such as De Bore, 2001) consider it as valid, because of its applicability to wide variety of problems connected with purchasing and supplier selection.

De Bore (2001) adds one additional characteristic, which significantly influences the attention paid to the purchase decision - the level of perceived risk. If the level of perceived risk is low, then the search for information is not as demanding as in the high-perceived risk situation. Also the number of considered alternatives will be not so high for low-perceived risk purchases and vice versa.

We suppose, the described buying situations are applicable to selecting a provider of an affiliate program, because content providers can either decide to employ new programs for their websites, replace current ones or continue using them.

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