Reflection Paper - Texoil

For the Texoil negotiation, I was in the role of the Service Station Owner. As such, my main objective was to sell the station and get the best possible agreement. My BATNA was $400,000, which represented an offer from British Petroleum and my resistance point was $413,000 after tax, which represented the cost of my trip. My target was $488,000, which included an additional $75,000 to help tie me over until I found a job upon my return. This resistance point represents a purely financial alternative. However, there were several other criteria or interests other than strictly financial which could have been satisfied through non-financial means. My underlying interest or reason for selling the station was
This was effective at putting a bit of pressure on the other party and forced them to concede. It also highlights the problem with a collaborative strategy. There is always the opportunity to cheat if the other party trusts you and you think you will not get caught. Another effective strategy was after collaborating during the negotiations and conceding back and forth was to hold out at the very end when we were very close to a deal. Then, I pushed for slightly more of a concession and stated if they agreed we would have a final deal. That’s not to say I would be squeezing them for every penny, but I got the price up from $200,000 to $210,000 in the last few seconds because the other party was just relieved to be done.

From the experience of others in class, I found that many others reached agreements even though there was no bargaining zone to reach an agreement on price. Therefore, many of the others also came up with distributive tactics and creative solutions, which allowed both parties to come to an agreement. What is difficult to determine is how much liberty you can take in creating alternatives. If you go too far, such as saying there is a Texoil boat at your disposal then you remove too much of the challenge of negotiating. Since that information is not in the role information, you have to be reasonable in terms of what