Buyer and Seller Differences in Business-to-Business Negotiations

The purpose of this article is twofold: first, to examine the differences between buyers' and sellers' use of negotiation tactics in face-to-face business-to-business (B2B) negotiations and second, to explore how negotiators' professed negotiation styles influence buyers' and sellers' use of tactics. The methodology is a multiple case study analysis of eighteen negotiators representing twelve companies in six real-life buyer-seller negotiations in B2B settings analyzed using qualitative research methods, including both comparative analysis and frequency analysis. We found some difference between buyers' and sellers' use of negotiation tactics, which suggests this question deserves further empirical study. Buyers' and sellers' use of specific tactics differs according to which overall strategy the negotiators chose, and sellers generally use a greater number of negotiation tactics than buyers. The findings challenge previous findings that suggest that B2B negotiations are collaborative and that negotiators communicate in a collaborative manner. The findings also increase our understanding of buyers' and sellers' variable use of tactics in the course of everyday practice as well as the interplay between negotiation tactics and strategies.