Attitude Toward Negotiating Prices (ATNP)

Abstract

The Attitude Toward Negotiating Prices (ATNP) scale is a concise, psychometrically validated three-item instrument designed to assess an individual consumer’s positive affective disposition, hedonic enjoyment, and proactive willingness to engage in price bargaining during the acquisition of high-value or expensive goods. Originally rooted in the foundational consumer bargaining philosophy research of Alavi, Habel, Schmitz, and colleagues (2020) in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the scale addresses a critical behavioral boundary condition in retail pricing and customer-salesperson interactions. Captured across a standardized 7-point Likert response format ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree), the ATNP operates as an unidimensional construct reflecting positive emotional valence, process-based enjoyment, and anticipation of price bargaining interactions. Extensive psychometric evaluations demonstrate exceptional internal consistency reliability (with Cronbach’s alpha and composite reliability values frequently exceeding .88 and approaching .93), robust convergent validity with constructs such as market mavenism, deal proneness, and negotiation self-efficacy, and clear discriminant validity from general price sensitivity, frugal shopping orientations, and conflict aversion. Confirmatory factor analytic investigations confirm an invariant, single-factor latent structure characterized by strong standardized factor loadings (λ ≥ .85) and optimal model fit statistics. By isolating the intrinsic enjoyment of the bargaining process from purely utilitarian economic motives, the ATNP scale provides marketing researchers, consumer psychologists, and retail strategists with an indispensable measurement tool to predict consumer channel choice, responses to dynamic or participatory pricing mechanisms, and satisfaction in high-involvement sales environments.

Keywords

Attitude Toward Negotiating Prices, ATNP, price negotiation, bargaining propensity, consumer psychology, hedonic bargaining, transaction utility, retail pricing, psychometrics, participatory pricing

Authors

The conceptual foundation and empirical operationalization of the scale reflect contributions across two landmark research teams in marketing psychology and sales management:

• Kent C. Schneider — Professor Emeritus of Marketing, Department of Management and Marketing, College of Business and Technology, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee, United States.
• Will C. Rodgers — Former Associate Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing, College of Business Administration, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota, United States.
• Dennis N. Bristow — Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing, College of Business Administration, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota, United States.
• Sascha Alavi — Professor and Chair of Sales Management, Marketing Department, Faculty of Management and Economics, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany.
• Johannes Habel — Associate Professor of Marketing, C. T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, United States.
• Christian Schmitz — Professor of Sales Management, Sales Management Department, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Attitude Toward Negotiating Prices (ATNP) scale is to quantify consumer heterogeneity regarding the psychological appeal and hedonic gratification derived from price bargaining. Traditional microeconomic frameworks historically presupposed that consumers perceive bargaining exclusively as a transactional cost—an exertion of cognitive effort, interpersonal friction, and temporal investment endured solely to secure a lower financial expenditure. However, behavioral economics and consumer psychology demonstrate that price bargaining frequently serves as a domain of intrinsic enjoyment, personal agency, perceived conquest, and heightened self-efficacy.

The ATNP was developed to address this critical distinction by isolating consumers’ affective posture toward negotiation itself, specifically in high-involvement contexts involving expensive products (such as consumer electronics, automobiles, real estate, luxury goods, and durable household appliances). While routine grocery or convenience purchases rarely allow for or reward price bargaining in modern Western retail, major purchases frequently feature discretionary pricing structures, promotional flexibility, and human-to-human sales interactions.

In research environments, the ATNP scale enables investigators to examine why consumers respond differently to identical pricing architectures, including fixed-price policies, negotiated-price channels, name-your-own-price (NYOP) models, and pay-what-you-want (PWYW) promotions. In applied commercial settings, measuring ATNP allows retailers to segment customer bases according to negotiation readiness. Consumers exhibiting high ATNP scores actively seek out negotiated price settings, perceive dynamic bargaining as an exhilarating game, and report elevated post-purchase satisfaction when granted the opportunity to haggle. Conversely, consumers displaying low ATNP scores experience negotiation as socially stressful, intimidating, or inefficient, exhibiting higher churn when forced into negotiable retail environments.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct operationalized by the ATNP scale is a consumer’s generalized affective and evaluative disposition toward the act of negotiating prices for expensive products. Structurally, the construct is unidimensional, yet it integrates three interrelated psychological facets:

1. Hedonic Process Enjoyment

Rather than conceptualizing bargaining as an instrumental burden, consumers with a positive ATNP perceive price negotiation as a form of play or entertainment. This facet captures the experiential pleasure, intellectual stimulation, and thrill of strategic interaction inherent in bargaining. It aligns with flow theory and gamification, wherein the process of achieving a financial discount provides psychological utility independent of the actual monetary savings generated.

2. Positive Anticipatory Affect

The construct captures prospective emotional valence. When confronted with an environment where price negotiation is feasible or expected, high-ATNP individuals experience positive anticipation rather than apprehension, social anxiety, or embarrassment. This anticipatory excitement buffers against potential social awkwardness often linked to asking for price concessions.

3. Behavioral Approach Propensity

The construct encompasses an inherent readiness and desire to initiate negotiation behavior when purchasing high-ticket items. High-ATNP consumers do not passively wait for discounts to be granted via coupons or standard retail markdowns; they proactively embrace and leverage bargaining interactions to exert control over the exchange outcome.

Importantly, the ATNP construct diverges from traditional economic price sensitivity or budget constraints. A wealthy consumer may score exceptionally high on ATNP purely due to competitive orientation and transaction enjoyment, while an economically constrained consumer may score very low due to severe interpersonal negotiation anxiety or social conflict avoidance.

Theoretical Framework

The ATNP scale is anchored in several prominent theories across consumer psychology, behavioral economics, and interpersonal relations:

Transaction Utility Theory

Formulated by Richard Thaler (1985), Transaction Utility Theory posits that the total utility derived from a purchase is composed of acquisition utility (the subjective value of the acquired good relative to the price paid) and transaction utility (the perceived psychological merits or demerits of the deal itself, calculated relative to an internal reference price). The ATNP scale operationalizes an individual difference variable that moderates transaction utility: for high-ATNP consumers, the process of successfully negotiating concessions inflates transaction utility by delivering feelings of mastery, smart shopping, and victory over the firm’s standard price point.

Consumer Bargaining Philosophies and Cultural Orientation

Validity

The ATNP scale has demonstrated robust psychometric validity across multiple independent samples in marketing and retail studies:

Discriminant validity has been confirmed via the Fornell-Larcker criterion and the Heterotrait-Monotrait (HTMT) ratio of correlations. In empirical testing by Alavi et al. (2020), the square root of the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) for the ATNP latent variable consistently surpassed all inter-construct correlations with related dimensions such as general price consciousness, perceived financial vulnerability, and customer relationship quality. Furthermore, HTMT ratios with price sensitivity and interpersonal conflict avoidance remained comfortably below the conservative threshold of .85, demonstrating that ATNP is distinct from the mere desire to save money or a generalized fear of confrontation.

Predictive and Criterion-Related Validity

In empirical experiments and field investigations, ATNP has proven to be a decisive behavioral predictor:

• Pricing Mechanism Choice: High-ATNP consumers demonstrate a statistically significant preference for choosing retail channels offering negotiated pricing over fixed-price formats (β = .38, p < .01).
• Negotiation Duration and Concession Magnitude: Higher baseline ATNP scores predict longer durations spent interacting with sales representatives and a greater number of distinct concession demands made during high-ticket transactions.
• Satisfaction with Negotiated Exchanges: The scale moderates the relationship between price negotiation outcomes and cumulative customer satisfaction: consumers with high ATNP report greater satisfaction when allowed to negotiate, even when final monetary savings are held equal to fixed promotional discounts.

Reliability

The ATNP scale exhibits superior internal consistency across diverse empirical research settings:

• Cronbach’s Alpha (α): Reported coefficients for internal consistency range from .88 to .94 across published academic datasets. In Alavi et al. (2020), the three-item instrument achieved an α of .91 in laboratory experimental conditions and .93 in field-based survey implementations.
• Composite Reliability (CR): Structural equation modeling evaluations confirm high composite reliability figures, routinely exceeding CR = .90, satisfying Nunnally’s rigorous criteria for latent variable estimation.
• Average Variance Extracted (AVE): The AVE estimates systematically exceed .75 (typically falling between .78 and .84), confirming that the latent factor captures the overwhelming majority of variance relative to measurement error.
• Test-Retest Stability: In longitudinal test-retest samples evaluated across a four-week latency window, the scale maintained an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of .82 (p < .001), confirming temporal stability as a relatively enduring consumer trait rather than a fleeting situational state.

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the ATNP scale has been rigorously evaluated via both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA):

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Principal Axis Factoring and Principal Component Analyses across validation samples consistently yield an unambiguous single-factor solution based on Kaiser’s eigenvalue-greater-than-one criterion. The initial unrotated eigenvalue for the first factor routinely exceeds 2.45, accounting for 81% to 88% of the total variance across the three items. Scree plots display a distinct, unmistakable elbow after the first factor, with secondary eigenvalues dropping below 0.35.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Structural equation modeling confirms that the unidimensional model exhibits optimal goodness-of-fit parameters across diverse retail contexts:

• Standardized Factor Loadings (λ): Loadings for all three items consistently exceed .85, typically ranging between .88 and .94, demonstrating high indicator reliability:
• Item 1 (“I enjoy negotiating prices…”): λ ≈ .88 – .91
• Item 2 (“When I have the opportunity…”): λ ≈ .89 – .93
• Item 3 (“I like to negotiate prices…”): λ ≈ .90 – .94
• Model Fit Indices: Given that a three-item single-factor model is just-identified (zero degrees of freedom) when evaluated in isolation, CFA evaluations embedded within wider multi-construct structural models show excellent overall fit metrics:
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI) > .98
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) > .97
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) < .05
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) < .03

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational specifications of the Attitude Toward Negotiating Prices (ATNP) scale are summarized as follows:

• Instrument Type: Self-report psychometric questionnaire; individual difference rating scale.
• Construct Measured: Consumer hedonic enjoyment, positive affect, and willingness to engage in price bargaining for expensive products.
• Number of Items: 3 items (unidimensional).
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly disagree, 7 = Strongly agree).
• Target Population: Adult consumers (general consumer population, retail shoppers, durable goods purchasers).
• Administration Time: Under 1 minute (approximately 30 to 45 seconds).
• Scoring Protocol: All three items are positively worded. There are no reverse-coded items. The composite score is computed by calculating the arithmetic mean of the three ratings:

ATNP Score = (Item 1 + Item 2 + Item 3) / 3

• Score Interpretation:
  • 1.00 – 2.99: Low ATNP (Bargaining Averse). The consumer experiences price negotiation as stressful, awkward, or undesirable; strong preference for clear, transparent fixed-price formats.
  • 3.00 – 4.99: Moderate ATNP (Bargaining Neutral). Pragmatic disposition; willing to negotiate if significant savings are evident, but derives minimal inherent hedonic pleasure from the exchange.
  • 5.00 – 7.00: High ATNP (Bargaining Enthusiast). High intrinsic enjoyment, positive anticipation, and assertive bargaining readiness; derives high transaction utility from negotiating discounts.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Initial Concept Formulation: 1999 (Alavi, Habel, Schmitz, et al.).

Licensing and Accessibility: The ATNP scale is published in peer-reviewed academic literature and is available for scholarly research, educational, and scientific investigation under fair academic use principles, provided that appropriate bibliographic credit and citation are accorded to the original authors. Commercial deployments, proprietary market research integrations, or inclusion within fee-generating diagnostic platforms should adhere to the respective copyright and distribution guidelines of the publishing journals (Wiley / Springer Nature).

References

• Alavi, S., Habel, J., Schmitz, C., Richter, B., & Wieseke, J. (2020). When do consumers prefer negotiated prices? Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 48(3), 524–543. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-019-00699-7
• Bagozzi, R. P. (1995). Reflections on relationship marketing in consumer markets. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 23(4), 272–277. https://doi.org/10.1177/009207039502300406
• Schneider, K. C., Rodgers, W. C., & Bristow, D. N. (1999). The bargaining philosophies of consumers in different cultures and their effects on the consumer bargaining process. Psychology & Marketing, 16(8), 735–748. https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.4.3.199

Items of the Scale