REAL ESTATE NEGOTIATION - AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Abstract

While recognizing the importance of the real estate industry, many do not pay great attention to the significance of the negotiation process involved. Thus, this study aims to examine what determines a successful negotiation outcome. Several issues were discovered in the findings. Openings in negotiation receive limited attention and in investigating whether initiatives by negotiators has a significant influence on bargaining surplus, it was revealed that negotiators who chose to initiate first were found to have a statistically significant influence on bargaining surplus. It was also found that the competitive and cooperative strategies were significantly associated with bargaining surplus. The competitive strategies were positively correlated whereas the cooperative strategies were negatively correlated with bargaining surplus. This shows that initiatives in negotiation openings are likely to extract a larger bargaining surplus, and that they are associated with a competitive rather than a cooperative strategy. An analysis was made on the factors determining a negotiation outcome. It was discovered that significant elements are the approaches to negotiations, namely, concern for others and concern for own. A closer scrutiny of the gender profile reveals some interesting facts. The findings showed that in general, female negotiators tend to adopt a cooperative strategy and were concerned about others as compared to the male counterparts. However, the difference was not statistically significant in this study. Negotiation is a skill and like any other skill, the rudiments can be learnt. Hopefully, revelation of the findings drawn from this study can be effectively applied to the world of negotiation.