Dave Roberts is calling on Freeburg’s Louisville plant. Freeburg is one of the world’s largest fiberglass companies. Dave sells extrusion equipment used to manufacture fiberglass pipes. Betsy Young chDave Roberts is calling on Freeburg’s Louisville plant. Freeburg is one of the world’s largest fiberglass companies. Dave sells extrusion equipment used to manufacture fiberglass pipes. Betsy Young chief engineer for Freeburg is concerned about productivity. She wants a six-month lease on the equipment because if uptime isn’t better than 97 percent, she wants to be able to replace it with competitive equipment.
She had a team of her engineers observe a demonstration by Dave. She also asked accounting to prepare its own analysis of the financial information to see how it compared with Dave’s. Frank Dorsett, also with Freeburg, is a rising junior executive. He is pushing for Freeburg to consider a Chinese vendor because he believes that buying equipment from China will open the China market up for the Freeburg fiberglass products made in Louisville. Frank is the director, international markets, and reports directly to Vice President of Marketing Sharon Cron. Frank is trying to get approval for a trip to China for Betsy, Jim Murray (VP of manufacturing), and Sharon to see the Chinese equipment.
Questions
- Explain Betsy’s and Frank’s motivations in terms of the reward–measurement model. You will need to make some assumptions about their jobs, so be sure to state those.
- Now explain each buyer in terms of the buyer behavior choice model. Again, be sure to state the assumptions you will need to make.
- What should Dave Roberts do? Which model of behavior would be most useful to Dave and why?
