Risk Reduction in Purchasing Organisational Professional Services

Abstract

Organisational professional services are often costly, time consuming, high-profile and of undeterminable and variable quality; all of which increase the risk associated with their purchase. Yet understanding of what risks are perceived and how they are reduced is limited. The results of a Lisrel analysis of organisational purchasers’ risk perceptions in a high risk scenario confirmed the positive relationship between risk perception and reduction and that overall risk is derived mainly from the financial risk involved. The article also presents a new framework for understanding organisational purchasers’ risk-reduction behaviour in the context of purchasing professional services by a not-for-profit organisation which involves latent risk-reducing concepts such as clarifying, simplifying and risk sharing. Implications for risk measurement are discussed, together with more managerial recommendations for understanding purchasers’ behaviour and changing marketing practice in this sector.

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