ABSTRACT
The potential contributions of marketing theory to private and public policymakers depend on the ability to find the optima of certain objective functions, subject to some constraints. This chapter aims to propose one view of an organization that may lead to a useful understanding of organizations as buyers and users of scientific and technical information (STI). It discusses some implications that may be useful for the sellers and buyers of STI. The chapter describes some notions about what we should do to improve our ability as marketers and students of human behavior to help business people and public policymakers. Echoing the premise that some of us preached in introducing the notion of consumer decision processes almost twenty years ago, understanding how an organization goes about acquiring, using, and sending information is a premise for successful efforts by the sellers of STI.
