Compliance Gaining

An example of an interpersonal persuasion event in which I attempted to convince someone to change his/her belief, attitude, or behavior would be when I was bargaining/negotiating prices on my new car/trade in value for my old car last summer. Some techniques I used were Door in the Face when offering a price for my old car and when negotiating a price for the new car, I used vocalics and chronemics.

When negotiating a price for my old car, I used the Door in the Face strategy. This strategy worked fairly well and we ended up on a price that was closer to my bid than the dealership's bid. I offered a sum of $5000 while he started out at $3000. We met at a price of $4500. WIN: Me - LOSS: Dealership. :) This worked out very well for me because I offered a sum that I knew they wouldn't take, but my offer after my first offer would sound much better because of the first offer. This gave me leverage and ultimately landed me the deal.

After this negotiation was finished, we moved onto the new car. For this, I tried to use vocalics and chronemics. In terms of vocalics, I tried to be assertive and dominant so that I would not be pushed around and have to settle for an unsatisfying price. In all honesty, I don't think this had much influence on the dealer as he had all of the power and was unmoved by my talk. What I did use that I feel had a lot of persuasive power was my use of chronemics. This is the use of time. Because they wanted to make a deal just as badly as I did, I said that I wasn't comfortable with the prices they were offering and needed time to consider this purchase. No longer than 48 hours after walking out of the dealership, they called me to tell me that they were going to drop the price on the car. All in all, my use of chronemics was a success and saved me a ton of money! WIN: Me. LOSS: Dealership. :)

In this situation, I feel I did everything well. The only thing that didn't work was my use of vocalics. In this situation, I don't think that this strategy is necessary as the dealer has the majority of the power. Otherwise, every other strategy I tried worked well and I would do the same in the future.