Best Practices in Negotiation - The Nibbler Versus the Camel
You can find numerous purportedly scientific approaches to study negotiation.
One is mathematical modeling of decision making, also referred to as game theory. This area attempts to quantify the probabilities that A will or will not do X in his bargaining with B. comment service
Game theory was one of many tools used through the Cold War to sort out the scenarios in which the superpowers would or wouldn't participate in a nuclear attack.
The situation with scientific approaches is that they don't really adequately measure or predict such human motivations as greed and disgust, nor do they fully consider the histories of the negotiators. I prefer to indicate the quite unpredictable moves people make when they're engaged in a "nibbling" encounter.
Nibbling, a term coined by Herb Cohen, is trying to improve an offer by getting an additional morsel, often as transactions are culminating. The exemplory instance of a person searching for a company suit emerges as an illustration. After he has tried it on, it's been chalked and pinned by the tailor the patron asks which shirt and tie the salesperson would recommend to fit the ensemble.
Enthusiastically, the clerk returns with a crisp shirt and power tie. The customer removes the jacket and pants and asks, "If I choose the suit, are you going to throw in the shirt and tie?"
Now the consumer seems to stay control. Owner and his tailor are ego-involved in writing up the order. As a share of the overall purchase, the shirt and tie are not much extra, at the very least computed at cost to the store.
All owner has to do is cut his commission a little, and he has an order. But will he buckle?
Nibbling advocates predict he'll, at the least often enough to make the gambit a fruitful one for the customer. They say greed will conquer disgust.
Not necessarily.
There's an expression that says the way people treat you is remotely a reflection of you. Moreso, your treatment will mirror how they have been handled by the folks that arrived on the scene before you did.
Assuming the clerk had the discretion to barter, if he was already disgusted with window shoppers and other timewasters before you nibbled, to combine the metaphor, your behavior might be the final straw, breaking the camel's back.
On the ground of "principle," he may reject your nibble, and force one to take the suit or leave it, which you might find an unsettling ultimatum.
You lose the suit, and he loses a sale of any kind and you both lose the full time you invested, and feel ruffled, emotionally.
Negotiation isn't a simple matter of outcomes, and seeming to have much, denominated in dollars. In addition it involves human transaction costs and benefits.
If you seek royal treatment in a clothing store, does it seem sensible to behave just like a beggar?
Nibbling appears to concern itself with crumbs. This hardly seems such as for instance a profitable enterprise, with the exception of the ones that are merely pretending to be thinking about a meal.
