Choice Behavior in Innovation Exchange Between Buyers and Sellers

This article extends the research on Behavioral Supply Management, and specifically characterizes the decision to exchange supplier–developed innovations. For the innovation exchange to take place, both actors in the dyad must actually make the decision to exchange an innovation with one another. Therefore, buyers’ as well as suppliers’ decision making are part of this research. The decision to exchange innovation is highly relevant, as innovations play an increasingly important role in business research. The applied methodology is a mouse-lab process-tracing experiment. The study is based on computer cursor moving and click data from 658 managers. As the conceptualized decision situation is highly specific, practitioners can build upon their business experience and are the experiment respondents. The sample includes buyer and supplier sub-groups. We differentiate our findings based on innovation intensity (i.e., incremental vs. disruptive innovations). The findings show that the intensity of an innovation does not imply different decision-making per se, although distinguishing incremental from disruptive innovation is often proposed. Furthermore, the relevance of exclusiveness (i.e., a buyer has exclusive access to a supplier’s innovation) is of minor relevance for the supplier but also for the buyer, even when these innovations are disruptive. Finally, the intensity of innovations is only relevant in high-quality buyer–supplier relationships. Under these circumstances, decision makers show irrational behavior, as they prefer alternatives with low economic benefits. That aspect points to the identification of relational decision traps and other theoretical and managerial implications.