Pattern Your Concessions? An Analysis of Concession Behavior in Buyer-Seller Negotiations

Concessions are critical in buyer-seller negotiations, since they influence the (non-)achievement of a contractual agreement. Existing research has extensively studied concession behavior in negotiations. However, to date, no study has examined the continuous exchange process of offers and counteroffers between the negotiation parties (e.g., concession patterns) in realistic buyer-seller negotiations. Our study primarily analyzes whether different concession patterns exist, and if so, how they impact the negotiation outcome, especially concerning the opponent’s concession behavior. We identified four different concession patterns and found, among others, that following a specific concession pattern achieves better negotiation outcomes than not applying a specific concession pattern.