Premium
Verbal Responses to Different Bargaining Strategies: A Content Analysis of Real‐Life Buyer‐Seller Interaction
Author(s) -
Galinat Withold H.,
Müller Gunther F.
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1988.tb00012.x
Subject(s) - microeconomics , order (exchange) , bargaining power , social psychology , phase (matter) , psychology , business , economics , finance , chemistry , organic chemistry
A field exerpiment was conducted in order to demonstrate a way in which social psychological research can avoid some of the shortcomings of past research on bargaining communication. Two preprogrammed male buyers negotiated a discount on the price of new cars with 48 professional salesmen. The salespersons' verbal responses to various bargaining strategies were recorded and analyzed by a content analytic scheme with the following categories: attempted antagonistic influence; attempted cooperative influence; strategic question; justification; self‐disclosure; concession refusal; “other”. Results indicated that (a) soft bargaining is reciprocated with attempted cooperative influence, whereas tough bargaining does not provoke attempted antagonistic influence; (b) stragetic questions are used as a response to both soft and tough bargaining behavior; (c) justifications are most frequent in the last phase of a sales interaction, especially when accompanying a concession refusal; (d) self‐disclosure was only present in the last phase of bargaining; (e) concessions are most frequently found in the early phase of bargaining and a concession refusal becomes increasingly frequent as bargaining proceeds; (f) most concessions are made in response to a soft‐soft bargaining strategy.