Over the past 15 years in particular, as I have led an “adult” life — marriage, kids, career — I also started to view my grandmother as a three-dimensional adult and not just the relatively limited view that grandchildren tend to have of their grandparents, particularly when we are children. 

This is not to say that she failed in any classic grandmother category — her unwavering support of all of us was amazing — and my brother rather hilariously eulogized my grandmother last week by noting that she was convinced that each job he ever had was filled after a nationwide search for the smartest and most talented person in which he was selected above all others.  But she also had a life beyond us — at least before us — and the stories of her life were lessons for me.  She was a high school accounting teacher — yes, she excelled at math — facing a law which stated that all teachers had to quit the moment they got pregnant but had to return to work immediately — the kind of law that was clearly not drafted by anyone who had ever been pregnant.  I loved the story of how when she got pregnant with my uncle she lied about when she got pregnant so that she could work longer—she had two “seventh month babies” in fact.  And then, after he was born, she connived with the doctor to write a note that the baby was sickly so that she could stay home to nurse him. 

Of course, that is only part of the story — and my grandmother made sure that I knew all of the stories of strong women in my family.  The doctor in this case was my great, great Aunt Rayah — who had been a doctor with the White Army in the Russian Revolution before coming to this country and restarting her medical practice.  Another set of stories focused on my namesake, my great-grandmother Anna, who had come to the U.S. in 1904 at the age of 17 all by herself.  She later sent for her parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, etc. as she earned enough money to send passage for each of them.   And, although she never attended college, she made sure that all four of her children, including my grandmother and my aunt, went to college and had professions.  One last story about Anna – when my grandmother and grandfather were married, in 1933 at the height of the Depression, they bought a new bedroom set at a furniture store that went bankrupt in between payment and delivery.  My great-grandmother apparently went to the store and physically sat on the furniture until they delivered it.  She had a rather persuasive negotiation approach. 

So, Mama, thank you for all of your stories.  I hope not to have to negotiate by sitting on my purchased goods until they are delivered — but because of you, I know that I would be more than capable of doing so if the situation warranted.

In Ian Ayres’ famous study of car dealerships in Chicago, it appeared that white men got the best (lowest) opening price for their cars, while black women got the worst opening bids.  In Melissa’s group, there was a wonderful mix of an older white male American (Howard Gadlin), Melissa herself (white female younger American), a young ethnic Chinese man (Andrew Lee), and two native Turkish speakers, so this was a great gender and ethnic mix to test.  

It turns out that this group found exactly the opposite of what Ayres found. 

Each person went in to ask about the jewelry box over the course of an hour.  The one potential failing of the test which they did not realize until later was that they dealt with different salespeople, so one of the differences could be the salesperson.  (This was not controlled for in the Ayres study, either.)  Results found by this group for the jewelry box:

Older white male—55 lira

Younger white female—45 lira

Young Asian male—30 lira

Turkish speaking females—25 lira

Although there are potentially many explanations – Melissa tried to ask the seller about this afterwards but to no avail – I have a few.  My guesses are based on my own interview with a different seller (our group of three talked for a long time to a different vendor of lights and scarves after one colleague went in to ask about a light and was quoted 150 lira, which our Turkish colleague then purchased for her at 50 lira).  Once we finished the purchase, we asked the indulgence of this wonderful guy who talked to us over tea for over an hour about his experiences in the market.  He was also an American citizen who had lived in San Francisco for ten years.  Based on the conversation with him, the vendors know that Americans don’t like to bargain and will only bargain for a round or two of counteroffers.

So, here is my thinking on Melissa’s experiment.  First, the store owner assumed that the older male had more money.  Second, the store owner assumed he would not bargain all that much (this would actually be somewhat similar to one of Ayres’ hypotheses on lack of BATNA or ability to bargain.) 

Melissa, who went in next, may well have gotten “the nice eyes” discount.  As explained by our store owner, he often will give a lower price to a smiling, nice-looking buyer.  (Note to self: reapply lipstick before going into bazaars.)  Melissa also thought that the seller could have assumed she would have less money to spend.  Andrew Lee, the recipient of the 30 lira price, thought that perhaps the seller assumed he had very little money — he was casually dressed and young, and there are not slews of wealthy Asians coming through Istanbul.  (According to our store owner, the wealthiest tourists come from the Gulf states.)  Finally, as expected, there is the local price – and this similarity factor, more than the discriminatory factors discussed in the Ayres study, seemed to have the most to do with the opening price.

Cross posted at Indisputably.

We were divided into groups for this exercise—I had the pleasure of venturing forth with Vanessa from Israel and Yilderoy from Turkey. My general process occurs in the following steps: (1) ask for the price for one jersey; (2) ask for the price for three jerseys with the assumption that most vendors are willing to give you a break on more; (3) ask for the price in dollars with the assumption that sometimes the exchange rate helps lower the price further; and then (4) ask for the price in cash with the assumption that, if the vendor would accept a credit card at all, he would definitely prefer to receive cash in either currency. Since we had a native Turkish speaker, we agreed that we would also add another step of seeing what happens in the native v. tourist price. (On another note, we have discovered that even for restaurants, there is a local versus tourist price. The posted price, if it exists, is for the tourist. Natives get a lower price. This also occurred last spring in Rome where a cappuccino (a necessity of life for me) across the street from the conference center was three times more for me than the residents.)

So, here is what happened. I found the jerseys that I liked and started bargaining. Step one—how much is one? 15 Turkish lira. The exchange rate is about 1.4 Turkish lira to a dollar so this meant the opening price was about $10.70 per jersey and that I would have to spend over $32 if I bought a jersey for each child. Step two—how much for three? 40 Turkish lira (about $9.52 per jersey). Step three—how much in dollars? 25 dollars for three (now $8.33 per jersey). Step four—Yilderoy starts bargaining in Turkish—I don’t know what was said, but the calculator was out and the result was about $21.80 for the jerseys (now $7.26 per jersey). Finally, step five, pulling out a nice crisp $20 bill and saying I will take them now if he takes the bill. Done! Final price is $6.66 per jersey.

A few thoughts—first, one clearly has to spend some time to do this. It would be completely understandable should you decide that the $10 I saved is not worth the 20 minutes I spent. For us, this was fun and educational. It also is culturally expected– at least over jerseys. For example, we were told that one did not bargain over food in the bazaar and this seemed to be the case. Buying Turkish delight on the last day to take home, I asked for a discount since I was buying two boxes and was given free samples instead. Of course, this was still well worth it to me and quite delicious.

Second, I do think that you need to be cognizant of your ethics here—I felt okay bargaining for $10 off on the jerseys but I do feel the guilt of ostensibly appearing to be the ugly American and bargaining over what could be real money for the vendors. Vanessa challenged me on this—why would I assume that I have a nicer life or more money? Shopkeepers affording stalls in the Spice Market need to be doing well, she noted, and I need to get over myself. In my attempt not to be patronizing, perhaps I am being even more so.

Either way, the story provided much food and fun for thought!

Think you should haggle only when buying a car or shopping in the streets of Morocco? In this recession, if you’re not bargaining for everything everywhere, you’re needlessly draining your wallet. According to the consulting firm America’s Research Group, in October, 56% of consumers said they had recently tried to negotiate at retail outlets other than car dealerships. Of those hagglers, 50% got deals. When the company repeated the survey in May, 72% of consumers said they had tried to haggle, and a stunning 80% were successful. “What you can do today is unbelievable,” says Herb Cohen, an expert dealmaker and the author of the 1980 classic You Can Negotiate Anything. “Americans may finally learn that price tags weren’t put there by the big printer in the sky.”

It sounds like a perfect time for negotiation students everywhere to test those skills and ask for what you want.  As the article notes, you might start out feeling sheepish but will end up finding the process rather exhilarating.

Andrea and her coauthors offer a humorous, but also disheartening, review of media coverage from the 2008 election that typecast Clinton and Palin into their respective roles.  They also discuss social scientific research suggesting that the double bind arises from deeply entrenched gender stereotypes.  They conclude more hopefully, however, with suggested strategies for professional women to minimize the harmful effects of the double bind.

The second paper, “Women at the Bargaining Table: Pitfalls and Prospects,” presents some of these suggestions in more detail, with particular attention to the implications for teachers of negotiation. 

Here is the abstract:

Research evidence across a number of disciplines and fields has shown that women can encounter both social and financial backlash when they behave assertively, for example, by asking for resources at the bargaining table. But this backlash appears to be most evident when a gender stereotype that prescribes communal, nurturing behavior by women is activated. In situations in which this female stereotype is suppressed, backlash against assertive female behavior is attenuated. We review several contexts in which stereotypic expectations of females are more dormant or where assertive behavior by females can be seen as normative. We conclude with prescriptions from this research that suggest how women might attenuate backlash at the bargaining table and with ideas about how to teach these issues of gender and backlash to student populations in order to make students, both male and female, more aware of their own inclination to backlash and how to rectify such inequities from both sides of the bargaining table.

The first paper appears as a chapter in Rethinking Negotiation Teaching: Innovations for Context and Culture (2009), while the second is published at 25 Negotiation Journal 233 (2009).

The paper appears in print as a chapter in the book Rethinking Negotiation Teaching: Innovations for Context and Culture.  I look forward to a follow-up on negotiation by texting.

The difference in the type of media meant that students really needed to engage in conscious “shmoozing” to build rapport.  We discovered that one Hastings student was actually a Marquette alum — building instant rapport — while other overly brusque email exchanges did not work as well.  Tone in email matters.  Students also appreciated the asynchronous part of email negotiations.  They could think, do some research, and then email back to their counterparts.  They also noted when they got in a good email rhythm with the other negotiator.  At the same time, email also made it easier to lose touch and for the negotiation to take longer than it would have otherwise.

We also saw some other effects from the email negotiation — diminished information exchange and diminished trust — that students needed to overcome.  But, having talked about this in advance, students knew that they would need to work at this.  All of which goes to the point that this was a very worthwhile exercise and practice. 

As the New York Times wrote about last month in a very good article, even real estate deals are being done over email. 

Professor Kathleen McGinn notes another important advantage of emails:

The record that e-mail creates can also make brokers more accountable. Dr. McGinn said that when an agent relays a request from a client, there’s a risk that the message might be distorted along the way. But chances for distortion disappear if every request sent by e-mail is copied to every other party involved in the deal.

Dr. McGinn said that e-mail messages should be taken seriously and not written on the fly. “They should be drafted like formal letters and not like an e-mail to your friend when you want to know if they’re ready for dinner,” she said.    

As to this last point, I was delighted to read from my students that correct grammar and punctuation still matter to this generation as well!  As one of them pointed out, you have less respect for a negotiator who does not even proofread what he or she is sending.

In March, after 384 days off the field, Ronaldo entered a soccer stadium again, this time wearing the shirt of São Paulo’s Corinthians for a match in an agricultural town of 95,000 deep in Brazil’s interior. Despite lumbering back some 20 pounds overweight, Ronaldo has scored five goals in seven appearances and tapped into a huge fan base in a nation where soccer is called a second religion. There’s already talk about putting the striker back on Brazil’s national team.

Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo plays for the Corinthians on Tuesday in Brazil.  The rough-and-tumble Brazilian leagues may look to be a huge step down for Ronaldo, who once stayed in five-star hotels from London to Istanbul. But by the accounts of those close to him, the 32-year-old, whose full name is Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima, is living a fairy-tale rebound that could happen only in his home country.

The striker’s greatest moment of glory came playing for Brazil in the 2002 World Cup, when he scored twice against Germany’s almost unbeatable goalkeeper Oliver Khan to take the title.

Knee injuries have three times upset Ronaldo’s career. In 2000, he snapped a right-knee tendon, sidelining him for over a year. Last February, his other knee gave in during a match in Italy, and the striker rolled on the ground in tears.  According to Ronaldo’s doctor, Joaquim Grava, Ronaldo’s injury, known as a patellar tendon rupture, is rare but curable with surgery and 10 months of rest. Returning to soccer, says Dr. Grava, is a matter of willpower and grueling therapy.

According to his agent, by last fall Ronaldo was on the mend and entertaining multimillion-dollar offers from the sort of up-and-coming teams in Europe and the Persian Gulf who are always interested in marquee names — even old and bruised ones.

In an unexpected turn, Corinthians made an offer to keep Ronaldo in Brazil. Corinthians couldn’t afford a European-size salary. The club pays him $175,000 a month (still a huge fee by Brazilian standards) and sweetened the deal by sharing sponsorship earnings, and giving Ronaldo 50% of ticket sales from any foreign matches.

Is this a fairy tale or a good negotiation lesson all around?

Cross posted at Indisputably.