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If I understand the question correctly, you are asking for the pros and
cons of acquisition in the retail model versus the business-to-business
model.
Truthfully, unless you are an individual consumer and are only purchasing a
single item, you will always see more value from a negotiated agreement.
The single item purchase does not provide you with the leverage necessary to
entice a business into treating you with any amount of visible respect,
metaphorically similar to the individual gambler versus the "high roller"
who is "comp'ed" as a result of their play.
Negotations for any acquisition usually result in better pricing, better
sale terms, (for example, what happens if there's a problem with the item
purchased?) and a more mutually beneficial long-term relationship. These
negotiated agreements do come at a price themselves, though, as they are
time-intensive to create and require an investment in resources to setup and
manage.
By way of example of what I mean, assume that you are buying a car - the one
personal tangible item that most people feel comfortable "negotiating on"
with the vendor. That car has a sticker price and a sales contract. But in
any vehicle purchase, how many people actually read the contract? Even as a
professional negotiator, I realize that my leverage to negotiate the terms
of the template agreement is minimal - so I focus my energy on the price. I
feel that for a purchase of that size, I am entitled to some price
flexibility, and this is borne out by the vast majority of people who
negotiate price with their car dealer.
But what if I was buying 10 cars? Or a 100 car fleet for a rental car
company? Should I: 1) Deal with the dealer or with the manufacturer? 2)Pay
full price (or even a dealer price) for each vehicle? and 3)Only live with
the standard automobile contract terms?
The answer(s) are that I will probably try to contact the manufacturer
directly, (thus eliminating a source of price increases in the middleman
dealer,) and I will significantly negotiate the price of each vehicle,
treating the entire purchase as a single sale which, because of the
increased value, has more negotiation room. Lastly, I will seek special
status as a buyer of an entire fleet and will probably look for maintenance
and service terms more favorable than would be received by the average
1-car-buying individual. And the manufacturer is obviously going to want to
work with me more readily because of the exponential increase in revenue.
Lastly, I would like to take just a moment to say that the so-called
traditional model of buying and selling is, in fact, negotiation. As a
consumer-based society, we have simply grown comfortable with the "just pay
the sticker price" model of commerce. If you visit any non-first-world
society, what you find is a world where bargaining, trading, bartering and
negotiating are the norm, not the exception. Negotiation, while more
intensive at times, will almost always yield more favorable results.
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