Niemi-Hirvonen2019

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Niemi-Hirvonen2019
BibType ARTICLE
Key Niemi-Hirvonen2019
Author(s) Jarkko Niemi, Linda Hirvonen
Title Money talks: Customer-initiated price negotiation in business-to-business sales interaction
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Business meetings, Customer interactions, Industrial marketing, Institutional interaction, Questions, Service
Publisher
Year 2019
Language English
City
Month
Journal Discourse & Communication
Volume 13
Number 1
Pages 95–118
URL Link
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481318801629
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
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Abstract

This article provides an in-depth analysis of a conversational exchange initiated by a customer’s price question in real-life business-to-business (B2B) sales encounters. The analysis focusses on when the customer requests a price, what that implies as well as how the price discussion is conducted. Marketing literature usually considers product/service price to be an obstacle that the salesperson needs to overcome; we demonstrate that the price question is a positive signal for the salesperson. By requesting the price, the customer claims sufficient understanding of the offer, recognition of the service value and a readiness to move to the next phase in the meeting. The salesperson initiates an insert expansion to tailor the price to her or his customer and then informs the price in an expanded clausal response to build customer value. The conversation analytic study was based on a dataset of 13 video-recorded B2B sales meetings in Finland.

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