Influences on Exchange Processes: Buyers' Preconceptions of a Seller's Trustworthiness and Bargaining Toughness

Exchange theories posit that trust has an important and favorable influence on dyadic interactions. This paper examines the notion that trust plays a key role in making a seller's tough bargaining strategy successful. In a bargaining experiment, we manipulated subjects' preconceptions about a seller's trustworthiness and bargaining toughness. As hypothesized, a seller's expected trustworthiness-plus-toughness in bargaining led to higher levels of buyer-seller cooperation and agreement and a higher level of buyer concessions.