Instructions

Thank you all for participating in this experiment.

This experiment will simulate the process of bargaining between buyers and sellers when shopping online. You will be randomly assigned the identity of the buyer or seller. At the beginning of each round of experiments, you will see a picture of the product, which will reflect the true condition of the product to a certain extent. We will provide sellers and buyers with the initial price for the product, and we will provide the seller with accurate quality information of the goods. Buyers need to make a guess about the true condition of the product and enter the approximate range of the guessed quality. At the same time buyers need to react to the current offer (price). Buyers can choose to accept the offer or counter. If the buyer chooses to counter, the seller can choose to accept or counter after receiving buyer’s offer. Buyers and sellers only have three bargaining opportunities in total. Buyers have 30 seconds to react, and sellers have 10 seconds to react. If the buyer and seller do not respond within the specified time, the system will automatically assume that you accept the current offer. In the third negotiation, if the seller is still dissatisfied with the buyer's offer, the seller can choose to decline. Then this round of trading failed. Neither buyers nor sellers can get additional earning from this round.

Both buyers and sellers can earn additional income based on their performance in the experiment:

Buyer’s earnings: original price *real quality- the final price of the purchased product Seller’s earnings: the final price of the purchased product – cost(q)