Abstract
This paper examines the types of business customers that prefer key account programs and provides guidelines for selecting key account program customers. The article reports the results of a survey of the customers of a high-technology telecommunications product. In the survey, the decisionmaking process involved in the buying of products as well as the demographic characteristics of firms were ascertained. Firms' preference toward key account programs was also determined. The data suggests that firms that make buying decisions based on multi-functional and multi-level inputs, and take a longer time to make decisions, prefer key account programs. Demographically, these firms are larger and predominantly for-profit. The results provide directions for future theoretical investigations and applications in sales management.