ABSTRACT
Innovativeness is the capacity and tendency to purchase new products and services. Midgley and Dowling are among the chief exponents of the view that innovativeness should be conceptualised as a mediating process, internal to the individual which manifests itself in the purchase and consumption of new items. Robertson and Kennedy demonstrated that venturesomeness contributes most to attempts to discriminate between innovators and non-innovators and, from his investigation of the earliest buyers of the touch-tone telephone; Robertson concluded that 'Innovators are significantly higher on venturesomeness. The industrial buying process is usually contrasted with consumer purchasing, the terms of which reflect its complexity. The decision-making unit (DMU) consists of those members of the organisation who are authorised to take final decisions and thus inaugurate their implementation. Reviewers of social scientific and managerial literature so frequently conclude by referring to 'the need for further research' that this remark has become a platitude.
