Over the past 15 years, Market-Partners has been researching how businesses and individuals actually go about buying. Our perspective on what constitutes a “buying decision” extends beyond deciding to issue a purchase order or pull out a credit card. In fact, it constitutes the entire process by which a business or individual becomes aware of an offering, develops interest in it, makes a commitment to acquire and then to adopt it. By taking a holistic perspective that spans this entire process, from awareness to adoption, we are able to develop a deep understanding of how markets function including how alternatives are considered and why offerings may not end up being acquired and adopted, despite a clear value proposition.
In addition to in-depth interviews with over 2,200 individuals spanning 900 companies across the Americas, Europe and Asia, we have spent over six years testing and validating hypotheses and observations which have allowed us to formulate some grounded assertions about how markets buy.
These assertions formulate a map of what we call “Customer Buying Journey DNA”. While the elements, or strands, of the Customer Buying Journey DNA are common to all buyers, the Buyer DNA itself is unique to a particular market. In fact, we would now argue that the very definition of a market should be a group of buyers with common Buyer DNA.