Organization and Bargaining: Sales Process Choice at Auto Dealerships

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bennett, Victor Manuel
• 署名单位: University of Southern California
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1120.1691
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 2003-2018
• 关键词: organizational studies; Organizational design; personnel; strategy; games-group decisions; bargaining; Industrial Organization; firm objectives; organization and behavior

摘要

This paper examines how firms' organizational form affects prices negotiated. Negotiated prices are one factor determining whether a vendor or customer captures the value from a transaction. Firms that systematically negotiate more effectively capture more value. Research has investigated individual- and market-level determinants of negotiation outcomes, but little has been done on the firm-level determinants of negotiated prices. I present a first look at one feature, sales process: whether salespeople handle the entire sale in parallel or customers begin with less experienced salespeople who can escalate difficult assignments. I model firms' choice of sales process as a biform game and test predictions of the model using a combination of transaction-level data on new car purchases in the United States and a unique survey of dealership management practices. I find that a serial process has implications consistent with improving firms' bargaining power and reducing customers' outside options.