Effects of Bargaining Strategies and Mode of Dressing on Bargaining Outcomes in Open Markets: A Natural Field Experiment Approach

As a result of concern over the possible generalizability of bargaining outcomes generated in the laboratory experiments using games, the present study manipulated bargaining strategy and mode of dressing on bargaining outcomes in open market, which is a real-life environment. Using 400 trained buyers adopting either of two bargaining strategies (hard vs soft) and/or mode of dressing (formal vs informal) who visited sellers in the open market (real-life situation) it was discovered that both bargaining strategy and mode of dressing had significant effects on bargaining outcomes. There were also significant interaction effects between the two variables on bargaining outcomes. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of a well-planned field experiment to replicate some of the findings in the laboratory.