SMEs’ Purchasing Habits

Although micro companies overpower the small and medium enterprise(SME) segment, generalizations are often with medium size companies, and therefore,there are many unknowns, especially when it comes to its buying behavior. Conformiststudies and industry practices assume SMEs to be “normative” or “conservative” buyers;however, this hypothesis is untested. This article aims to scrutinize the reality, andproposes a unified model that rejects pre-containerization in buying behaviortypologies, as well as selectiveness in terms of audience type, whether it is corporate,SME, or consumer. While replacing researchers’ perceptions with the audience’s, themodel yields actual knowledge that can lead to audience’s beliefs in lieu of theopposite, which is used to mislead stakeholders. The study shows that SMEs also buy likeindividuals and spend in a similar way to consumers’, including not only “normative” and“conservative” but also “negligent” and “impulse” zones. From the research-implicationsperspective, future studies by behaviorists can explore why SMEs purchase in this way.Marketers may benefit from the finding that SMEs buy like individuals. In addition, SMEsmay want to be conscious of their purchasing habits, and—utilizing the newly introduced“risk score” frontier—policymakers should assess the consequences of these habits at themacro level