Online marketplaces: why a little humour goes a long way
09/04/2024
4 min
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Online marketplaces – such as Etsy, eBay or Leboncoin in France – have expanded rapidly in recent years – driven by a variety of factors including technological change, the Covid pandemic, inflationary pressures, or the development of the circular economy and attractivity of secondhand products. Millions of consumers now use these platforms to buy and sell: eBay, for example, reported 134 million active buyers in 2023. A study* by professors and a student** from IÉSEG has explored the short negotiation process that takes place between buyers and sellers on such platforms and more specifically how the use of humour can impact the outcome of this negotiation. Their work shows how a little fun can actually go a long way for buyers on these platforms.
How negotiations can differ in this online setting
Unlike traditional offline negotiations, buyers and sellers on such platforms don’t physically meet and exchange. They have little expectations in terms of future collaboration and exchanges are generally brief and anonymous (the buyer and seller don’t normally have any personal knowledge of each other’s circumstances).
The team of researchers at IÉSEG were keen to see how the use of humour during these negotiations could potentially impact this process – and ultimately the likelihood the seller would accept the offer made.
“We know from previous research that humour has the potential to regulate certain social interactions. It can make people feel good, for example, and smooth over difficult and contentious situations. However, there are times or situations in which humor is simply not appropriate. Therefore, we didn’t necessarily expect that humour in this type of one-shot online negotiation would automatically be beneficial,” explains Professor HAMSTRA.
Is humour perceived as being friendly or impertinent?
The team created an experiment to investigate the use of humour in an offer from a buyer toward a seller on an online marketplace and the impact humour has on the chances that the seller accepts an offer below the original asking price. “We considered the possibility that humour may be perceived in two different ways. On the one hand, it can be playful, and this could mean that a buyer who uses humour is seen as friendlier than one who does not, making the seller more likely to want to cooperate. On the other, given the psychological distance in this online context, humour could be deemed inappropriate and therefore it could be perceived as impertinent.”
In their online experiment, hundreds of participants were asked to put themselves into the position of a seller of a wardrobe on an online platform. They were then asked to read an offer from a potential buyer – that would either use humour or not. They measured the extent to which the buyer was perceived as friendly or impertinent and whether the seller would accept the counter offer (which was lower than the asking price).
The experiment found that buyers using humour were perceived as friendly and this significantly raised the likelihood that the seller accepted the offer under the asking price. Further, the results indicate that the use (or non-use) of humour has no significant effect on being perceived as more impertinent in a one-shot online negotiation.
Practical implications for sellers
According to the authors, these findings have a number of applications for buyers and sellers: “With the significant rise in online sales predicted over the coming years […] these recommendations are relevant for many individual consumers as well as businesses who are active on online marketplaces.”
The first practical lesson for sellers is that they should be aware of the consequences of humorous statements by potential buyers. While humour can make the interaction more pleasurable and/or entertaining for the seller, the study clearly shows that there is also a risk of being influenced into agreeing to a lower sale price.
The authors recommend sellers to reflect on how they want to respond to humorous statements by a buyer before entering an exchange. This puts them into a position where they can make a conscious decision during the exchange about whether they want to agree to an offer made by the buyer irrespective of the use of humour by the buyer.
The second practical implication for sellers is to establish a clear “walk-away point “before entering an exchange with a buyer. “A pre-defined walk-away point provides the single most important reference for a seller when having to decide whether to accept or reject an offer made by a buyer and, thus, helps the seller to remain objective in situations where the buyer is using humour to influence the seller’s decision in his or her favor,” notes Professor LEMPP.
And for buyers… the benefits outweigh the risk
The study; therefore, confirms that it can be a good idea for buyers to use humour when making an offer to a seller in a one-shot online interaction. Furthermore, the risk of being perceived as impertinent is low.
“Hence, buyers can use humour relatively freely and without fear of being misunderstood as impertinent,” the authors note. This is interesting, as one could expect that, in text-only exchanges and in the absence of facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language, the subtleties that often accompany humour may become elusive, leaving room for misunderstanding and perceptions of impertinence. However, our findings suggest that this is not the case and that the benefits of using humour (from the buyer’s perspective) outweigh the risk of being perceived as impertinent.”
Training for individuals and companies?
The team’s final practical recommendation applies to buyers and sellers alike. “We recommend integrating the topic of humour into training for individuals and companies who have a high volume of transactions on online marketplaces.”
More specifically, they endorse the inclusion of guidance on how to respond to humour in one shot interactions, how to delineate various forms of humour to sensitizing buyers and sellers to the cultural nuances that govern humorous expressions, and how to identify the contexts where humour is fitting, and its potential implications.
“While it may prove difficult to train buyers and sellers to be funny, it is certainly possible to heighten their awareness of the potential consequences of humour in one-shot interactions and prepare them for an adequate response,” adds Professor STORME.
*“A little humor goes a long way? The influence of humor on offer acceptance in one-shot online negotiations”, Emma Garnier** (who is now a graduate of IÉSEG), Melvyn Hamstra, Frieder Lempp, Martin Storme (International Journal of Conflict Management, 2024)
An adapted version of this article has also been published this week in French on the Conversation France.
