Bargaining Behavior in Personal Selling and Buying Exchanges

Abstract

"Five defining characteristics of negotiations are used to emphasize the need to develop an adequate social context into para-simulations of marketing exchanges. Some extant marketing games of exchange are criticized as being too far removed from the natural Situation they attempt to simulate. A Car Dealers Game is presented which is believed to meet the essential characteristics of an actual marketing exchange. Empirical test results using the Car Dealers Game are reported which support most of 12 hypotheses derived from a simple framework of buyer-seller exchanges. The use of full cycle behavioral research (from lab to field to lab to field) on marketing exchanges is advocated including observation and manipulation of antecedent, strategic decision-making, and process variables in both laboratory and natural locations. "