Robot market and the perfect price

I remember from economics class how firms try to navigate pricing. On one side of the spectrum, if you negotiation with each and every customer, you will be able to get the perfect price for each customer. But this takes too long plus it all depends on the skill of the negotiator. So companies decide to set a standard price. This way companies don't have to train every sales rep in negotiation, plus they can conduct business quickly.
Imagine at the grocery store

Clerk: "One can of beans, four dollars."
You:"Four dollars, this is absurd. I will give you a quarter"
Clerk: "A quarter, no sir. That will not even cover the cost of the can those beans are in. A dollar, this is my best price"
You: "Ok a dollar."
Clerk: Scans beans and sends them down to the bags. Picks up other can of beans. "One can of beans, 5 dollars."
You: "Five dollars, you just sold me the identical one for a dollar"
Clerk: "Everyone knows you need two cans of beans to make anything."

This situation is absurd in a western style supermarket. Supermarkets make up for their lack of negotiating a perfect price for each item by volume.

But what if supermarkets could train a robot. A robot that is an expert negotiator and has an unlimited amount of time. Time and negotiation skills are the only two things that are keeping supermarkets from getting the perfect price.

I found the robot. And it is inside the ticket pricing of airline ticket sales.

As I was booking my flight to Portland. I stepped away from the computer to eat dinner. When I came back, the ticket price increased $100 dollars. I couldn't believe it. I saw red glowing letters in the lower corner, 2 seats left. I remembered this feeling from the markets of India. If you come back to a vendor, he knows you are desperate and can jack the price. But,how could the airlines know it was me coming back?
I logged out, then searched without logging in, to see if I could mask my identity. The price had jumped by another 50 dollars. This was getting ridiculous. I was feeling jerked around. I logged in via a virtual connection, so there was no way the airlines could trace my computer. The price was holding steady at 150 dollars above what I initially thought I was going to pay. I pulled up Amtrak and realized that their prices are a joke. I pulled up a driving map to Portland and realized I couldn't make it in time. I decided to sleep on it. The next morning I searched again and the price dropped back down to the original level I was set on.

I don't know what sort of robot I was negotiating with, but I dealt with it the same way I did the in markets of India. I just kept asking for the same price over and over again, refusing the answer I didn't want to hear.

Intercultural Tip: Specific cultural skills are not always culturally bound. Find ways to apply skills learned abroad in the new context back home.

American Negotiation

One thing traveling in a developing country does to you is develop your sense of what is possible. As I mentioned in previous blogs, everything is negotiable. This realization of the possibility sticks with me weeks after I return. Little did the agent at the rental car agency know.
I got this call on the phone asking if I had received the packet of information regarding damage to the rental car I had recently rented in Denver. I mentioned that I did not and it turns out that they had sent it to the wrong address. I rented that car several weeks ago, but I remember my interaction at the return station. The car check in person noticed a small indentation in the hood of my car and mentioned I would be getting a phone call. I didn't respond at the time because I was focused on catching a flight. But, here was the call, several weeks later and I was ready.
Because you Intercultural Adventurers know from the post

Negotiation in a land where "Nothing is available, but everything is possible"

that all things are negotiable, I will structure this post similarly.

Indian Step One: Order Chai.
In India, I ordered chai for various reasons. But this tactic was not available. I wanted the same effect, so I modified. I ordered the agent to send the packet to me overnight.
This does two things
First, it enriches the power dynamic. He may be able to order me to pay for damages, but I can still order that he send the packet to the correct address.
Second, I am acknowledging the culture of an agent in a call center. Having worked in a call center myself as a kid, I remember that following the process was all I was allowed to do. I could do something extra, such as overnight a package, if it was contributing to the process.

Indian Step Two: Interrupted for advice.
Again, I needed to modify this for the more direct culture. I asked the agent if he was from Denver.
My intent with this question was as follows.
First, it subtlety establishes the fact that he was no where near the event and does not know the details of the car, the agency or the employees in question.
Second, it gives the negotiation time to breathe. It lets the agent know that this will not be a pro forma interaction.
Third. When one asks questions, they are establishing a power dynamics. Think of cop movies, "We are the ones asking the questions here."

American Step: Debate.
This is something I learned not to do in most other countries. In the rest of the world, deals happen because of relationships between individuals, not the salience of points won in honest non-personal debate, matter. But with this agent, I was on my home turf.
First attack the subject of the matter: "I disagree with the allegation that there is damage. While I did notice something on the hood of the car after the check in person pointed it out. It was invisible in most light conditions, and I had to bend over to see what the person talking about."

Second attack the process: "Furthermore I disagree that the way in which I was held liable for damage to the vehicle. When I rented out the car, the sales agent held report where I should have been able to indicate previous damage to the car. On top of that the sales agent quickly walked me around the car. Had I been given the report or given the time to fully inspect the vehicle, I may have noticed the small indentation on the hood.

Third, feign insult while demanding credibility. "I didn't jump on the hood or park my car under trees with falling branches. Furthermore, I would not wipe off the evidence such as marks or scratches on the car if that were the case. I would own up to it. I don't even know what caused this indentation"

Indian Step Three: Flatter
While flattery in America will not get you as far as in other countries, face saving is still something to consider. After all, if I were to get this guy angry, he could come after me as a matter of spite. After all, he has nothing vested in the entire case. "I know you are just doing your job and you don't make the rules. But damage was there before I rented the car and the process for determining that I am liable is weak. You can't control these things. " On top of this, I wanted to give him a way to take the high road, or at least tell his boss that he took the high road. "This is my first rental car experience with your company. I have many years left in my rental car life. I am going to rent a car in the future, so I don't know that, from a business perspective this is really worth it. Anyway send the paperwork my way and we will see what happens."

I got a call 20 minutes later
"We determined the damage to the vehicle to be pre-existing."

Intercultural Tip: Your experience in other cultures are not locked there. Integrate what works.

Pushing to Prove It

As a person of ideas, I must always be mindful of my tendency to give the abstract more attention than the practical. "That's fine in practice, but how does it work in theory", is something I could be found saying. Plato would have grouped me into the Philosopher caste in his Republic, because I recognize the reality of the forms versus their shadows. However, with almost everyone else in the world, I must make my ideas matter in the here and now. This became clear as I met a fellow traveler while hiking up to an abandoned ashram.

After a few hours of hiking and discussing our experiences in India, we finally engaged in the standard North American identification ritual. "So, what do you do [for work]?" I asked. She mentioned that she was a message therapist. Multiple images of all the message therapists flipped through my mind, followed by various typologies of message therapy. When she asked me what I did, and I said an interculturalist, I had to explain. "Essentially, we help people become more effective in differing cultural circumstances". Being mindful of my tendency for the abstract, I immediately jumped into what I will call here an accountable explanation. I attempted to explain the work by actually working it.

I asked her what cultural difficulties she was finding in India. She mentioned that she hated the pushiness of people. We were eventually able to move it from a characteristic of people to an actual action, which I later found to be the pushing of people while in lines and groups. "Yea they really push here don't they? So, this is an example of a cultural difference I would help people resolve."

The next question she asked, pulled me completely out of the abstract and brought my explanation to full account.

"How?'

My mind raced through various models. What is 'pushing in India' according to the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity? How could one apply Personal Leadership to pushing? Is pushing related to any factors on the Globe study?

Perhaps it was because I was spending my mornings doing meditation or perhaps it was due to my work with Personal Leadership, but I told her the trick would be to separate the act of someone placing their hand on you and applying gentle force to the thing we call "pushing". Pushing in our culture is a mild act of agression. It is an intentional act used to put someone in place. In fact many fights in the school yard start with pushing and escalate from there. Pushing in India is just something people seem to do while in groups or lines. Old ladies push, kids push, it just happens.

"But how do I separate these two things" she asks me. She was really holding my answer accountable. I felt the legitimacy of the entire intercultural field resting on my shoulders.

"Just start doing it." I answered. I surprised myself with this answer. I was thinking about it while saying it. "Start pushing in lines and see how it feels." I felt I was taking a risk with this answer. How does it relate with my studies or what I have learned in the intercultural field? But the next question would resolve it entirely.

"But I am not in a hurry, I really don't care enough to push" she said.

"That is the answer. Here pushing is not about being in a hurry, or really caring. It is just what you do. When you start pushing yourself, you will train the body to accept this."

Shared taxi's and Extended Famlies

If it didn't happen so many times, I would have not noticed it. But it was the third time during this trip and I figured it was something worth mentioning...
As you may know, the way to get around in many developing countries is a shared taxi. It is usually a seven seated mini van that is filled with ten people or more.
Skinny? Age 12 or younger? Last one on? You are sitting on a lap.
The trick behind these shared taxis is to be on of the last ones on. If you are the first one, you may have to wait 30 minutes or more until the taxi scout find more people to fill up the rest of the seats. I learned this the hard way after being hurriedly scooted into a taxi van in Ghana with the utmost urgency, only to learn that I would be sitting in the nearly empty taxi with no air conditioning in hundred degree weather. In my trips to Africa I developed a skill for hanging around the taxi, ordering tea, and spending time until the last minute when I could jump onto a nearly full taxi (but not the last one, see above) and take off. This skill eventually developed into a unconscious habit.
So while here in India I have stepped away from a taxi for a minute to get a Chai, or snack and come back to the taxi to see it nearly full. I find myself thinking where did these people all come from. I can not convey how uncanny it is to experience. I felt like I blinked and there was a minivan full of people. To explain this phenomenon I subconsciously searched for frames of reference.
While here I had been pondering how a country like India gets so populace. Could it be the abundance of food? The lack of genocidal wars? Early establishment of centralized government? So, following along this mind direction, for a brief second I thought, India is so full of people, that shared taxi's just fill up in an instant. However, I was not satisfied with this simplistic explanation. I looked at the contented of the taxi and there was a diversity of ages. Small kids, teenagers, people my age and my parents age. Then as I saw their behavior, they all seemed to know each other. This was all the observation I needed to conclude that the reason shared taxis fill up so quickly is that entire families are getting on at once. Furthermore, they are not American families consisting of two parents and a kid, but Asian families that consist of grandma, grandpa, uncles, cousins....
For the remainder of my time here, I will be sure to grab a seat while I can get it.

Intercultural Tip: Unconscious behavior was once a conscious response to a particular circumstance. When circumstances change, your unconscious behavior will need to be brought to your conscious.