From AgriMarketing Magazine - Who is the agricultural input buyer? Is the buyer profile changing? These are important questions to agricultural input salespeople. Traditionally, agricultural input salespeople and marketers categorize producers as business buyers, economic buyers and relationship buyers. Business buyers are those who give relatively equal weight to factors such as price, product performance, service and convenience when making purchase decisions. Economic buyers base a majority of their decision on the price of a product, while the decisions of relationship buyers are most heavily influenced by convenience level and customer service. In these times of tight profit margins, it seems like producers are either business buyers or economic buyers, and the relationship buyers can't afford to stay in business. In this article, we examine characteristics of agricultural input buyers, the changing relationship buyer and marketing implications.