Track: Business Management

Abstract

Societal and organizational cultures have been suggested as an important factor that influences the Switching of a Brand. They not only shape the underlying behavior but also influence the perception of a consumer in decision making. Similarly, the culture of Organization will influence its decision to switch or not to switch in a situation of crucial decision-making. Previous studies linking this phenomenon of culture with switching has mostly been found to be focusing on consumer switching with cross-cultural or societal references in B-2-C context. Research in business-to-business (B2B) is still modest and lagging far behind consumer marketing. Given the prominence of business services, there has been an almost total lack of attention to the industrial or B2B sector. Further, the highest growth in services marketing today is especially in business, making this an important area of study.

This study aims to investigate the influence of different organizational cultures on switching of services in B-2-B context. Our study proposes that Switching Behavior of an organization will differ from one organization to another, and is directly related to its organizational culture. It takes into account the Organizational culture based on Hierarchy, Market, Clan, Adhocracy, Person Support, Bureaucratic and Professional Cultural. We then go on to discuss and propose the hypothesis based on these Organizational Culture type with respect to switching in Business-to-Business context. For an Organization with Hierarchical Culture, there will be a less tendency to Switch a particular Business offering/ Brand. For Bureaucratic, Person-Support, Professional and Market culture with high Internal Locus switching can go either way depending on level of these dimensions. Similarly, for Adhocracy there will be a high tendency to switch because of External Focus. On the other hand, for Hierarchy and Clan culture there will be less tendency to switch. We suggest and discuss these propositions in further details in this study.