 Undervaluation versus unaffordability as negotiation tactics: Evidence from a field experimentHaimanti Bhattacharya and Subhasish Dugar Journal of Economic Psychology, 2023, vol. 96, issue C Abstract: We use a field experiment to evaluate the impacts of two price negotiation tactics on buyers’ bargaining payoffs in a marketplace where face-to-face haggling determines price and sellers often cheat on the weight. We implement three scripted interventions, all involving undercover buyers requesting a non-specific price discount. In one of the non-baseline interventions, buyers undervalue the product, while in the other, buyers reveal their inability to pay the quoted price, both at the discount-request phase. The data from a within-seller design show that compared to devaluing the opponent’s product, mentioning one’s lack of affordability leads to a higher rate of bargaining success and a higher mean price discount, culminating in a higher buyer payoff net of the monetary value of cheating. We also find that merely asking for a discount without furnishing a reason, as in our baseline intervention, leads to better bargaining outcomes for buyers than underestimating the opponent’s product. Keywords: Bargaining tactics; Buyer surplus; Field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:96:y:2023:i:c:s0167487023000107 DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2023.102609 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Psychology is currently edited by G. Antonides and D. Read More articles in Journal of Economic Psychology from Elsevier |
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