On automated e‐business negotiations: Goal,policy, strategy,and plans of decision and action

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in automated e‐business negotiations. The automation of negotiation requires a decision model to capture the negotiation knowledge of policymakers and negotiation experts so that the decision‐making process can be carried out automatically. Current research on automated e‐business negotiations has focused on defining low‐level tactics (or negotiation rules) so that automated negotiation systems can carry out automated negotiation processes. These low‐level tactics are usually defined from a technical perspective, not from a business perspective. There is a gap between high‐level business negotiation goals and low‐level tactics. In this article, we distinguish the concepts of negotiation context, negotiation goals, negotiation strategy, and negotiation tactics and introduce a formal decision model to show the relations among these concepts. We show how high‐level negotiation goals can be formally mapped to low‐level tactics that can be used to affect the behavior of a negotiation system during the negotiation process. In business, a business organization faces different negotiation situations (or contexts) and determines different sets of goals for different negotiation contexts. In our decision model, a business policymaker sets negotiation goals from different perspectives, which are called goal dimensions. A negotiation policy is a functional mapping from a negotiation context to some quantitative measures (or goal values) for the goal dimensions to express how competitive the policymaker wants to reach that set of goals. A negotiation expert who has the experience and expertise to conduct negotiations would define the negotiation strategies needed for reaching the negotiation goals. Formally, a negotiation strategy is a functional mapping from a set of goal values to a set of decision‐action rules that implement negotiation tactics. The selected decision‐action rules can then be used to control the execution of an automated negotiation system, which conducts a negotiation on behalf of a business organization.     

Competition,Transparency, and Reciprocity: A Comparative Study of Auctions and Negotiations

The paper discusses experiments aimed at comparing multi-attribute reverse auctions and multi-bilateral negotiations for procuring goods with multiple attributes. Both exchange mechanisms involve a buyer purchasing from one of several sellers. Two types of negotiations are considered: verifiable and non-verifiable. They differ in the sellers’ knowledge of the current best offer on the table; in verifiable negotiations the best offer is automatically shown to every participant, which makes it similar to auctions. Online auctions and negotiation systems were used to study auction and negotiation processes, and the mechanisms’ efficiency. The results show that buyers did best using auctions, followed by non-verifiable and verifiable negotiations. We also looked into the differences between auctions and negotiations in terms of their duration, sellers’ and buyers’ involvement, and efficiency and conclude that the behavior of buyers and sellers cannot be explained solely on the grounds of traditional economics. It can, however, be explained on the grounds of social exchange theory and behavioral economics. In multi-bilateral negotiations competition and social behavior coexist. When transparency is introduced the social effect becomes stronger, weakening the impact of competition.     

Protocols for automated negotiations with buyer anonymity and seller reputations

In many Internet commerce applications buyers can easily achieve anonymity, limiting what a seller can learn about any buyer individually. However, because sellers need to keep a fixed web address, buyers can probe them repeatedly or pool their information about sellers with the information obtained by other buyers; hence, sellers' strategies become public knowledge. Under assumptions of buyer anonymity, publicly‐known seller strategies, and no negotiation transaction costs for buyers, we find that take‐it‐or‐leave‐it offers will yield at least as much seller profit as any attempt at price discrimination could yield. As we relax those assumptions, however, we find that sellers, and in some cases buyers as well, may benefit from a more general bargaining protocol. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Business Buyer Relationship Management Through Seamless Internet Integration

Abstract

There is a growing need to look specifically at Internet integration into business relationship management tactics, beyond sustaining current customers. The Internet enables active implementation of a business buyer relationship management (BBRM) orientation through the facilitation of information sharing and buyer connectivity across various buying conditions. Using Internet tools, the goal of merely sustaining present buyers now appears insufficient. BBRM takes into account that these tools must be effectively utilized across a variety of buying situations including how sellers and buyers come together, stay together and inevitably remake their business relationships endure. BBRM makes effective use of Internet technologies despite various buying situations to enable seller-buyer relationship formation, maintenance and long-term continuation.     

The effect of communication medium on negotiation performance

Concepts of media efficiency and media richness are employed to describe the impact of communication media on two key aspects of negotiation behavior—reducing uncertainty about the task, and managing equivocality about negotiator's bargaining orientation. A controlled experiment was conducted to examine how the use of either audio or text forms of verbal communication, and the presence or absence of visual communication, impacts negotiation performance in a bilateral monopoly task. Each member of a pair of negotiators received private instructions either to maximize joint profit (a cooperative bargaining orientation) or to maximize individual profit (an individualistic bargaining orientation). Negotiation performance was measured via the total amount of relative cooperativeness of verbal communication and joint profit. In the audio mode as opposed to the text mode, the total amount of verbal communication and joint profit was increased. In the presence of visual communication the relative cooperativeness and joint profit of pairs of individualistic negotiators was less than that of cooperative negotiators. In the absence of visual communication the relative cooperativeness and joint profit of pairs of individualistic negotiators was no less than that of cooperative negotiators. In sum the findings suggest that uncertainty regarding the logical structure of the task was reduced primarily via verbal communciation, while equivocality regarding the bargaining orientation of the other negotiator was reduced primarily via visual communication. The implications for group decision and negotiation research and practice are explored.     

Cultural Dimensions and Prototypical Criteria for Multi-Criteria Decision Support in Electronic Markets: A Comparative Analysis of Two Job Markets

Electronic markets are virtual meeting places where buyers and sellers interact to trade products or services. The main motivation for both buyers and sellers to participate in an electronic market is the desire to maximize their private utility (Bakos 1998). Electronic markets therefore usually provide some form of communication, decision or negotiation aid for buyers and sellers to support their utility maximizing goals. This paper presents a comparative analysis of two electronic job market case studies conducted at a university in Europe (Brussels, Belgium) and in the United States (Newark, New Jersey). At the occasion of the universities’ career fairs, students (n = 392) and local companies (n = 57) were invited to participate in an electronic job market to identify the best job offers (n = 137) and students, respectively. Participants were able to create personalized software agents to aid their search and decision making activities in the market. Every software agent was embedded with a multi-criteria decision support tool to produce a rank ordered list of students or job offers. Preference data gathered from market participants’ use of the multi-criteria decision model allow us to construct relational preference structures using a technique based on the mathematical theory of fuzzy relations (Bandler and Kohout 1980). These preference structures express relationships among the criteria that students and companies have used to identify job offers and companies, respectively. The purpose of the paper is to present the communicative and cultural implications of these relational preference structures. The theories of Hofstede (1983), Hall (1977) and Trompenaars (1993) on cultural dimensions allow us to discuss cultural differences on the choice of prototypical criteria. The paper concludes with implications for the use of electronic markets in the staffing industry and the role of software agents in such job markets.     

Culture's Influence on Business Negotiations in Four Countries

The usefulness of a theoretical model of the determinants of business negotiation outcomes is tested in a simulation with business people from four countries (the United States, Japan, Brazil and Spain). The article is an extension of Graham, Mintu, and Rodgers (1994), and also directly tests Hofstede's and Hall's theories of culture. A problem-solving approach results in higher negotiation outcomes for Americans when their partners reciprocate. Role (buyer or seller) is the key determinant of profits for Japanese negotiations; that is, buyers do better than sellers. For the Spanish negotiators, a problem-solving approach actually yielded lower profits. For the Brazilians, interpersonal attractiveness lead to higher partner satisfaction.     

Ethno‐cultural considerations in negotiation: pretense,deception and lies in the Greek workplace

A retrospect into ethos, this study examines the impact of individualism, collectivism, ethical idealism and interpersonal trust on negotiators' attitudes toward questionable negotiation tactics in Greece. A thousand survey questionnaires were administered to Greek employees, of which 327 usable responses were collected. Our findings empirically corroborated a classification of three groups of negotiation tactics, namely, pretense, deception and lies. Individualism–collectivism and ethical idealism were found to be related, and interpersonal trust was found to be unrelated, to attitudes toward questionable negotiation tactics. Emphasizing the non‐US and non‐Western European nature of the empirical data collected, the originality of this research further stems from the development of a comprehensive research framework about questionable negotiation tactics in Greece.     

国际货款支付中L/C风险规避的实证分析

在信用证（L/C）支付方式下,银行充当了进口方和出口方之间的支付中介和保证人,它使银行信用介入商业信用,在很大程度上缓解了买卖双方互不信任的矛盾,满足了买卖双方加速资金周转的愿望。由于L/C业务的复杂性和L/C自身存在的缺陷,交易中的各个当事人都要面对一定的风险。L/C交易一般涉及三方当事人,即开证申请人（在国际贸易中一般为买方或进口商）、开证银行、受益人（国际贸易中的卖方或者出口商）,在这三方当事人中,任何一方不作为都可能给其他两方带来风险,需要采取相应的风险防范措施。     

Wholesalers as Global Marketers

ABSTRACT

The notion of wholesalers as global marketers is almost an oxymoron in marketing thought. Yet, in fact, wholesalers as an institutional type have for thousands of years been involved in what today we refer to as global marketing. Wholesalers of many types have performed numerous activities or functions that have always been necessary for connecting distant buyers and sellers so that transactions can be consummated across international boundaries. In fact, by performing many distribution tasks or functions, wholesaling intermediaries of all types create the channel flows that link buyers and sellers together on a global scale. These flows, of which there are eight (product, ownership, promotion, negotiation, financing, risking, ordering, and payment), do not automatically appear out of thin air. Rather, the eight flows are created and sustained by many types of organizations that perform all of the myriad distribution tasks needed to connect sellers and buyers. Wholesale distributive institutions of all kinds, from the traditional so-called full-function merchant wholesaler to the more narrowly focused wholesaling intermediaries such as freight forwarders and export desk jobbers, all make a contribution by creating and sustaining channel flows. In recent years, as these flows increasingly extend to an international or global level, wholesaling intermediaries will likely play an even larger role in global marketing.     

The Impact of Electronic Commerce on Procurement

Internet technology has been increasingly used to enhance the global competitiveness of various business applications through the widespread electronic commerce (EC) functions. Many Internet-based systems have been designed and developed for supply chain management (SCM) in various areas such as computer, garment, and publishing industries, which mainly center on communication infrastructure, coordination between production and distribution, and procurement functions with security mechanisms. However, EC is not a panacea. On many occasions, participants (including buyers, sellers, and enablers) face various risks and overhead during the deployment of a new technology. In this article, we present the impact of EC on procurement processes in supply chains, highlighting the issues of buyers, sellers, and the transaction processes involved. The procurement processes are classified into preprocurement (sourcing), procurement (quotation, negotiation, order placement, and transaction), and postprocurement (delivery). Moreover, a four-phase migration model of procurement onto the Internet is introduced to illustrate the technical, security, and financial requirements in the deployment process of EC. The migration model not only gives a development guideline of procurement functions, but also provides an evaluation framework of e-procurement. An industrial example is used to illustrate the corresponding evolution as a result of EC deployment. The paper concludes with a summary of EC impact and future research directions.     

Attitudes Toward Ethically Questionable Negotiation Tactics: A Two-Country Study

Current research has identified five discrete US negotiation tactics, a traditional one considered to be ethical, and four considered to be ethically questionable. Scholars have independently used culture to explain how the endorsement of these five negotiation tactics varies across nations. They have also independently used interpersonal trust and ethics propensity to explain antecedents of the endorsement of those five negotiation tactics. This research combines all those variables into one model that investigates the influence of horizontal and vertical individualism–collectivism, ethical idealism, and trust propensity on employees’ attitudes toward ethically questionable negotiation tactics in Israel and Kyrgyzstan. A survey questionnaire was translated from English to Hebrew and Kyrgyz, and 615 responses were collected from employees in various industries in the two countries. We empirically confirmed three types of questionable negotiation tactics discovered in previous one-nation studies, namely, pretending, deceiving, and lying. Vertical individualism was found to be positively, and horizontal collectivism was found to be negatively, related to pretending, deceiving, and lying. Ethical idealism was found to be negatively related to the endorsement of the lying tactics, while trust propensity was negatively related to the pretending tactics. Compared with Israel, employees’ endorsement of ethically questionable negotiation tactics was significantly higher in Kyrgyzstan. Contribution to theory and practice is discussed.     

Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises' Collaborative Buyer–Supplier Relationships: Boundary Spanning Individual Perspectives

Boundary‐spanning individuals (BSIs) play a critical role in supply chain management, especially in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) where interactions with buyers and suppliers can depend heavily on just a few individuals. This study, utilizing data from Korean manufacturing‐sector SMEs, explores whether cooperative social value orientations of SMEs' BSIs influence the effects of collaborative buyer‐supplier initiatives. The results suggested that the performance implication of decision‐sharing initiative increases when BSIs have a high level of cooperative social value orientation. However, it also negatively moderates the relationship between risk/benefit sharing (involving financial losses or gains) and performance suggesting possible negative side effects. However, we found that such orientation also negatively moderates the relationship between risk/benefit sharing (involving direct financial losses or gains) and relationship performance suggesting possible negative side effects.     

Marketplace literacy education and coping behaviors among subsistence consumer–entrepreneurs during demonetization in India

We study the impact of marketplace literacy education on marketplace coping behaviors in the face of systemic shock due to demonetization, deriving important implications for consumer affairs from this radically distinct context. We study whether and how such education can have positive impact even in the face of such macrolevel disruption that disproportionately affects those with the least resources and renders them even more vulnerable. Marketplace literacy education encompasses awareness and knowledge about marketing as well as self‐confidence and awareness of rights as buyers and sellers. We examine the influence of marketplace literacy in urban and rural areas on coping behaviors of low‐income women consumer–entrepreneurs during demonetization in India, using a retrospective survey. We derive implications to mitigate the effect of future shocks on consumers and entrepreneurs at the vulnerable end of the income spectrum.     

Collaborative orientation to advance value co-creation in buyer–seller relationships

This study extends the theory of value co-creation by investigating how collaborative orientation advances value co-creation drivers that benefit both buyers and sellers in competitive markets. With direct field research, conducted in a real-life context, the authors interviewed (using a mirrored, semi-structured protocol) buyer–seller respondents at multiple levels in 1 seller and 10 buyer firms. Ten cases developed from these data reflect how buyers and sellers develop value and share resources to advance value co-creation during a formal buyer–seller relationship effort. Our findings suggest four propositions and identify four drivers that may advance value co-creation in buyer–seller relationships: (a) mutual understanding of industry problems through continuous interactions during the relationship period; (b) ability to develop and leverage knowledge and resources; (c) share asset-specific investments; and (d) shared long-term goals. This article extends previous resource-based models and provides novel insights into value co-creation.     

The impact of expectation of future negotiation interaction on bargaining processes and outcomes

This research conceptualizes and experimentally tests differences in pre-negotiation behavioral influences, negotiation processes, negotiation outcomes, and post-negotiation dispositions involving buyers and sellers negotiating under the expectation of future negotiation interaction (EFNI) versus no expectation of future interaction (Non-EFI). EFNI bargainers have lower aspiration levels, expect the negotiations will be friendlier, and predominantly use a problem-solving bargaining style compared to Non-EFI bargainers. Perforce, EFNI appears to have a strong moderating effect on satisfaction as Non-EFI bargainers' satisfaction is strongly predicated on their monetary outcomes (expectation-disconfirmation paradigm), while EFNI bargainers' satisfaction is not. Further, while EFNI negotiations take longer than Non-EFI negotiations, they also produce greater parity between buyers' and sellers' satisfaction, which leads to fewer bargainers being dissatisfied. Thus, compared to one-time negotiations, bargainers in EFNI contexts are more likely to be disposed to bargain again, to enter into negotiations with a harmonious disposition and seek solutions that benefit both parties.     

The components of interest rate swap spreads: Theory and international evidence

This article contains both a theoretical and an empirical analysis of the components of interest rate swap spreads defined as the difference between the fixed swap rate and the risk‐free rate of equal maturity. The components are determined by expected LIBOR spreads, default risk, and market structure. A model of the swap market incorporating debt market imperfections and corporate financing choices is used to explain participation by both swap buyers and sellers. The model also motivates an empirical relationship between swap spreads and the slope of the risk‐free term structure. The article then provides empirical evidence on the cross‐sectional and time‐series variation of swap spreads in seven international markets. The evidence is consistent with the suggested components across both markets and swap maturities as well as over time. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 23:347–387, 2003     

The impact of stock split handling rules on returns: Evidence from Canada

Canadian and US stock split handling rules differ. In the US, buying shares is inconvenient before the ex‐date. In Canada, sellers face a miniscule probability of a big loss if the split is cancelled between the ex‐date and payable date. On the ex‐date, Canadian stock returns are positive and the proportion of seller‐initiated trading declines. After the payable date, returns are negative and the proportion of seller‐initiated trading increases. For cross‐listed shares, effects of US and Canadian rules are offsetting as returns are insignificant. We conclude that rules associated with a remote possibility of large losses affect investor behaviour. Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Price discrimination through multi-level loyalty programs

Loyalty programs often feature multiple rewards with different requirements; for instance, an airline offering a free domestic ticket for 10 K miles, and an international ticket for 20 K miles. This research focuses on the role of multi-level rewards as a segmentation and price discrimination mechanism: Multi-level rewards can increase firm profits when buyers differ in purchase frequency and/or time discount factor. We propose that a program with two rewards can be designed in such a way that (i) it is more profitable than a one-reward program, and (ii) buyers self-select. Light users prefer to receive the smaller reward two times over receiving the larger reward one time, even though the smaller reward is less than half of the larger reward. We show that the smaller reward helps the firm enlarge its base in the light user segment. We also compare multi-level programs with quantity discounts.     

Emergent Internet Technology Applications for Relationship Marketing

Abstract

In this paper we bring together the concepts of Relationship Marketing (RM) in the marketing literature and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in Information Systems (IS) literature to identify and assess emergent Internet-based Information Technologies (IT) that add value for consumers. We focus on the customer's perspective by identifying the key benefits consumers seek when they enter into IT-mediated interactions with sellers. We review the IS-CRM literature and identify 8 critical IT categories that have the potential for changing how buyers and sellers establish and maintain relationships in the Internet era. Subsequently, we introduce a conceptual model, which considers the nature of the consumer's involvement with sellers through emergent Internet-based technologies in juxtaposition to potential technology-based benefits to consumers. We then discuss the implications of this proposed direction. Finally, we discuss a future research agenda, which considers the use of IT in relationship management.