Corporate User Report: Purchasing Professionals

This Briefing focuses on the unique information needs, habits, and preferences of specific functional groups of users (FGUs). Both buyers and vendors are familiar with purchasing professionals due to their role in the content purchasing process, but this FGU has its own content needs as well. Purchasing professionals' information profile shows some interesting attributes that anyone serving and selling into this market will need to understand. The 258,000 purchasing professionals in the United States independently spend about $1.11 billion annually on information content, and purchasing departments also make non-centralized content purchases at high levels. Purchasing professionals, with their high need for information and their unique intermediary role, are an attractive target market for commercial vendors and an excellent partnering opportunity for information centers and other content deployment functions. This Briefing will benefit both commercial vendors and internal content deployment functions that hope to serve (or partner with) this unique user market.