Package Concession Tactics – How to Succeed within Package Deal Negotiations

Abstract: Package deal tactics hold promising effects in multi-issue negotiations as they can positively influence process and outcome variables. However, their use and tactical planning are challenging for the negotiator due to their complexity, involved cognitive burdens, and framing effects. Especially concession planning and management within the interaction of multiple issues in one package becomes a hurdle. Existing research offers findings on optimal offer management in multi-issue negotiations and concession management in general. However, sufficient findings on package concession management and tactics are missing. Concrete recommendations would be helpful though to make negotiators actually use package tactics correctly and effectively in negotiation practice. The aim of this paper is to extend the existing literature by developing concrete package concession tactics and examining their effects on outcome and counterparty´s reaction. We derived different package concession tactics following a literature review and proved their effects and success within a laboratory experiment.

Keywords: package deal negotiation, package concession tactics, experimental study