Finding Potential Speed Bumps and Pitfalls in Buyer–Seller Negotiations in Twenty Cultures

• Published in: Negotiation journal 2020-06, Vol.36 (3), p.249-286
• Main Authors: Graham, John L., Mahdavi, Mehdi, Fatehi‐Rad, Navid
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anthropology; Behavior; Behavioral economics; Behavioral sciences; Brand loyalty; Buyers; buyer–seller negotiations; Content analysis; cross‐cultural negotiations; Cultural differences; Cultural groups; Culture; Decision analysis; Economics; Game theory; Laboratories; Linguistics; Marketing; marketing negotiations; Negotiation; Negotiations; Psychological theories; Purchasing; Questionnaires; Researcher subject relations; Simulation; Social psychology; Sociolinguistics
• ISSN: 0748-4526; 1571-9979
• DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12333

Our study examines the effects of culture on negotiation behaviors and outcomes. We also explore how culture moderates the relationships between those behaviors and outcomes, a subject that has been neglected by most researchers. Our work integrates theories and methods from many areas of the behavioral sciences: marketing science, decision analysis, behavioral economics, game theory, social psychology, anthropology, sociolinguistics, linguistics, content analysis, and structural equations modeling. The data were created in a laboratory setting in which 1,197 businesspeople from 20 cultural groups participated in a three‐product buyer–seller negotiation simulation. In this article we first describe how our database was developed. Second, we look at how observed behaviors are associated with questionnaire‐derived negotiation processes and outcomes. Third, we develop a new tool for understanding cultural differences and use it to investigate how culture influences negotiation behaviors, processes, and outcomes across the 20 cultural groups included in our database.