Overview

Navid has worked with different organizations across various industries, from the Federal Reserve to medical device manufacturers, heavy construction equipment sellers, and B2B software providers, to assemble proprietary datasets in studying organizational buying. For example, in one of his recent papers, he shows how professional ties between individuals working for buyers and sellers can affect pricing in B2B markets. Individual decision-makers in selling organizations who previously worked for a buyer charge the buyer a higher price. The higher reliability of the seller towards the buyer in the face of supply shortages justifies this price premium.

In another project, Navid explores organizational buying in the context of medical device markets. He assembles a unique multi-year panel dataset on contracting by hospital administrators and product usage by surgeons at over 200 hospitals. He uses these data to answer questions about how share-of-wallet contracts—where a seller gives discounts to a buyer based on the seller’s share of the buyer’s total purchase in a category—affect the rate of innovation adoption among hospitals. He finds that the impact of share-of-wallet contracts depends on the nature of innovation and the initial market share of the innovator. While these contracts slow down innovation adoption for minor innovations from smaller players, they speed up the adoption process for major innovations. The impact of these contracts on innovations from market leaders is limited.

More recently, Navid has focused on the implications of novel data collection and analysis technologies, like the internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), for the practice of B2B marketing and sales.