MARKETING

Marketing of Product and Negotiation Styles

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Marketing of Product and Negotiation Styles

Introduction

Negotiations are a pervasive activity in human relations, including family and social life as well as legal, business, political, military, and diplomatic affairs. Scholars from all of these fields and others, including psychology and communication, have developed unique approaches to analyzing and teaching negotiation. The systematic study of negotiation has expanded and flourished across several disciplines, most notably since the early 1970s. Some reasons for the increased interdisciplinary interest in negotiation include overburdened courts, interdependence, competition, the information age, and globalization. Additionally, the study of negotiation as a process has grown out of an emerging consensus around the “idea that conflicts often could be restructured and reframed so that partisans would regard conflict as a shared problem that had mutually acceptable solutions” (Bazerman,Neale,1992).

Discussion

Varieties of Negotiation Strategies

Dual Concern Model

The dual concern model suggests that people will adopt different negotiating strategies depending on their level of concern about their own outcome, the other party's outcome, and the maintenance of the relationship with the other party (Pruitt, 1999). (The dual concern model has been adapted by many authors in the negotiation field.) When negotiators have a high level of concern about their own outcome and a low level of concern about the other party's outcome or about maintaining the relationship, they are more likely to choose a competitive strategy, such as positional bargaining or compromising. If negotiators have a high level of concern about their own outcome combined with a high level of concern for the other party's outcome and a high level of concern for the relationship, they are more likely to choose a cooperative strategy(Craver,2003,pp. 48-55).

Positional Bargaining

The goal for the positional bargainer is to gain acceptance of the solution he has in mind and to maximize his own outcome. Meetings begin with unilateral presentations of proposals, rather than questions about interests. Negotiators tend to come to the table with positions, implicit or explicit threats, and demands. This approach is often accompanied by a dominant, “take it or leave it” negotiating stance and a refusal to back down from initial positions. Adversarial feelings and tension will likely mark the interaction (Breslin,Rubin,1999).

Compromising

This is the “give and take” approach in which negotiators intend to reach a settlement point between the original offers. When positional bargaining ends in deadlock, parties often attempt to break the deadlock by moving toward a compromise. In this strategy, both sides can claim a “win” to the extent that they influence the counterpart to move from her original position. Advocates of interest-based negotiation consider compromising to generally be a lose-lose strategy; each side may end up with less than would be possible under a cooperative, value-creating strategy (Adler,2006).

Compliant or “Soft” Bargaining

The soft (also called compliant) negotiator is above all concerned with reaching agreement while avoiding conflict. To do so, she is likely to yield prematurely or to make unilateral concessions. A soft bargainer may reveal her bottom line right away and will show a relatively high level ...