On eBay, Facebook or Leboncoin, humor lowers prices

Online platforms – such as Etsy, eBay or Facebook Marketplace – have experienced rapid expansion in recent years. And humor could well be a formidable negotiating weapon.

Frieder Lempp / the conversation

Today, millions of consumers use platforms like eBay, Etsy or even Facebook Marketplace to buy and sell. Indeed, the eBay site, for example, declared 134 million active buyers in 2023.

How can online negotiations be different from traditional negotiations? In this new world, buyers and sellers do not meet physically by definition. They have few expectations in terms of future collaboration and the exchanges are generally brief and anonymous. The buyer and seller normally have no knowledge of the other’s personal situation. Our study looked at the impact that the use of humor could have during these negotiations and on the likelihood that the seller will accept the offer made to him when it is used.

Facilitator or off-topic?

One of the functions of humor is to regulate certain social interactions: introducing it into problematic situations can help people feel better. However, humor must be handled with caution: in some situations, no matter how tense, resorting to humor is not at all appropriate. What about online sales? Is humor a facilitator or is it inappropriate?

To find out, we conducted an experiment, the results of which are published in this article. We considered two ways in which humor could be perceived in an online sale. On the one hand, it can be seen as playful: a buyer who uses humor would therefore be perceived as friendlier than one who does not, thus leading the seller to cooperate. On the other hand, given the psychological distance inherent in “online” interactions, humor could be judged inappropriate and provoke a negative reaction in the seller.

In our online experiment, hundreds of participants were asked to put themselves in the shoes of a cabinet salesperson on an online platform. They were then asked to read an offer from a potential buyer, who might or might not be humorous. In the “humor” condition, the buyer responded to a counteroffer from the seller with the following humorous remark: “For a cabinet salesperson, you’re not very easygoing!” Thus, We measured how friendly or cheeky the buyer was perceived to be. Then the potential seller had to indicate whether or not he would accept the counter-offer, which was lower than the asking price.

There are some weird things for sale on eBay ????

Laughing salesman?

The experiment showed that buyers who used humor were perceived as friendly, which significantly increased the likelihood that the seller would accept the offer below the asking price. Furthermore, the results indicate that using humor or not has no significant effect on being perceived as more impertinent in a one-off online negotiation.

These findings have a number of applications for buyers and sellers, particularly as trends show that this type of transaction is expected to continue to grow in the coming years.

The first practical lesson for sellers is to be aware of the consequences of humorous remarks by potential buyers. While humor can make the interaction more enjoyable and/or entertaining for the seller, the study clearly shows that there is also a risk of being influenced into accepting a lower sale price. Sellers should therefore consider how they wish to respond to humorous remarks from a buyer before entering into an exchange. This will allow them to make an informed decision during the exchange whether they wish to accept the buyer’s offer, regardless of the buyer’s humor.

Learning to Respond to Humor

The second practical implication concerns sellers: to protect themselves from buyers’ attempts to influence them, they have every interest in having in mind the lowest price they are willing to go down to before starting an exchange with a buyer. In this way, the seller can always check whether it is still consistent with his initial objectives and thus reduce the impact of the buyer’s humor on his decision.

In summary, the study confirms thatIt may be wise for buyers to use humor when making an offerespecially since the risk of being misunderstood or coming across as impertinent is low. However, one might have imagined that in text-only exchanges and in the absence of facial expressions, tone of voice and body language, the subtleties that often accompany humour become elusive, giving way to misunderstandings and the impression that the joker is impertinent.

These findings should also prompt companies that conduct a large number of transactions on marketplaces to train their sellers on humor. Specifically, training should include guidance on how to respond to humor in one-on-one interactions, delineating different forms of humor to sensitize buyers and sellers to the cultural nuances that govern humorous expressions, and identifying the contexts in which humor is appropriate and its potential implications.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Watson has changed the title and subtitles. Click here to read the original article

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