Purchasing is the culmination of discussions with top purchasing executives developed through an initiative known as the Global Procurement and Supply Chain Benchmarking Initiative at Michigan State University. The authors' experiences combine to create a managerial perspective of the core tasks and challenges required to effectively manage the purchasing function. This text is unique in that it is the first purchasing textbook to employ a truly strategic perspective. While prior books have dealt with many components of buying materials, the authors have sought to identify the contributions that purchasing can make to corporate and business strategies, through the development of integrated procurement and sourcing strategies. The book contains forty cases that have been developed and used in the classroom.