4. What stages of the buying process can you identify in this case? Explain.

Joe Reeka is a senior sales representative for Power Flour, LLC, a supplier of flour to private-
label brands in supermarkets as well as to bakeries across Europe. Power Flour has developed a new white flour with a nontraditional bleaching agent, which will allow for the baking of bread products with lower carbohydrates but without a change in taste. Joe feels this new flour product would be ideal to sell to Rising Action Bakery and has sent information on the new flour to its purchasing department.
Rising Action Bakery is a small but growing chain of bakeries in Germany, specializing in “home-baked” premium bread products. Its products are baked at a central bakery and shipped to its retail stores. The management team is quite ethnically diverse including talent recruited from multiple global regions. CEO is Ana Paula Gutierrez, and she has a small senior management team consisting of a production and operations manager, Dawn Chiles; a sales and marketing manager, Nimesh Patel; a purchasing manager, Joan Wells; a finance and accounting manager, Matt Simon; and a store coordination manager, Dan Levy. Each manager leads an assistant manager/coordinator and an executive assistant. Rising Action also has a store manager and staff for each of its 24 retail stores.