The Death of Competitive Negotiation

I recently read Richard Luecke's book on workplace negotiations, which focused largely on the tactics used to resolve differences and gain cooperation in the context of an ongoing relationship - which is distinctly different to competitive negotiation, in that tactics that gain a short-term advantage at the cost of damaging the relationship with the other party must be avoided.  In reading the book, I was struck by the notion that competitive negotiation techniques are applicable to a decreasing number of situations - to the point that, for the everyday person, the value of competitive negotiation is practically nullified.

The most familiar instance in which negotiations become competitive to the verge of hostility is in negotiating large-scale infrequent purchases.    It used to be that buying a house or buying a car was regarded as a highly competitive negotiation in which the parties would not refrain from backstabbing and punching below the belt - but it seems to me that this is a dying practice in the automotive and real estate industries.   Vendors who neglect to consider the value of a relationship stand a significant competitive disadvantage, and harm their long-term viability by being overly aggressive in the pursuit of short-term profit.

While a vehicle or a house is an infrequent purchase, they are seldom one-time purchases and the experience is not forgotten by the buyer.   When it comes time to purchase again, even years later, the memory of their experience will lead them to seek a different vendor, and when others ask them for referrals, they will certainly relate negative experiences with vendors and thereby dissuade others from doing business with vicious negotiators.

This can be witnessed in the correlation of certain statistics, namely those that measure customer loyalty and those that measure customer advocacy.   The two are not the same, though they are often mistaken as such, and they are very strongly correlated.

Information technology is likely to be credited: prior to the Internet, it was difficult to get ratings and reviews of most vendors from reliable and unbiased sources.  It was random chance that a person in a prospect's circle of acquaintances had experience with a given vendor and could say anything at all - and even if they had such information, they tend to be reluctant for reasons of social etiquette and self-esteem to say something negative or admit that they had been taken advantage of in a negotiation.   There is much less reluctance, and much greater opportunity, for people to be forthcoming and honest online.

Moreover, the online medium has a quality of permanence: a person may be counted upon to forget the negative aspects of an interaction if it is stored entirely in organic memory, but digital memory is accurate and persistent.   If they chose to share their negative experience, it remains a part of the digital record for far longer than it may remain in human memory.   Additionally, the fact that they have made statements "publicly" will cause individuals to be more resolute, as changing their mind about a vendor is not a private decision, but one that will also be perceived publicly, and perceived as a lack of integrity or honesty.   To publish a negative review is to swear an oath to personally avoid the vendor.

As such, the more gentle tactics of collaborative negotiation are likely worth a great deal more consideration than they had been in ages past, and the hardball tactics of competitive negotiation are becoming largely extinct - or more to the point, those who leverage those tactics are becoming largely extinct.  I expect that's a good thing.