Cultural Similarity and Supplier Negotiation Behavior: Strategic Insights from the Costa Rican Retail Industry
| Páginas | 3-18 |
| Fecha | 28 Diciembre 2025 |
| Fecha de publicación | 28 Diciembre 2025 |
| Autor | Gustavo Cubillo-Salas, M. Carmen Saorín-Iborra |
| Materia | Derecho de las Nuevas Tecnologías |
J. Technol. Manag. Innov. 2025. Volume 20, Issue 4
3
ISSN: 0718-2724 - Journal of Technology Management & Innovation - www.jotmi.org
is journal and its contents are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Cultural Similarity and Supplier Negotiation Behavior: Strategic Insights
from the Costa Rican Retail Industry
Gustavo Cubillo-Salas1 , M. Carmen Saorín-Iborra2
Abstract
Although cultural similarity is oen considered to facilitate the development of negotiations from a win-win or value creation approach, the
evidence obtained calls this assumption into question. Recognizing negotiation as a critical component of organizational strategic processes, this
study challenges the traditional integrative/competitive dichotomy commonly used in negotiation behavior analysis. e study adopts an abduc-
tive reasoning approach, enabling an iterative dialogue between empirical observations and existing negotiation theory. From a methodological
perspective, the research is positioned as a theory elaboration study, aiming to rene and extend established negotiation frameworks rather than
to test predened hypotheses. Based on 21 in-depth interviews with professional buyers engaged in customer/supplier negotiations at four leading
supermarket chains in Costa Rica, which together represent more than 80% of the national supermarket market share in the country. e study
examines how the degree of cultural similarity inuences the three categories of negotiating actions: inappropriate competitive, acceptable com-
petitive, and integrative. e ndings show that greater cultural similarity does foster more integrative actions but does not reduce the occurrence
of acceptable or inappropriate competitive actions. ese insights are relevant both academically and professionally, particularly in the elds of
business and strategic decision-making.
Keywords: supplier negotiation behavior; cultural similarity; negotiating actions; in-depth interviews, strategic decision-making.
(1) Escuela de Administración de Empresas, Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica, Cartago, Costa Rica.
(2) Facultat d’Economia, Departamento de Dirección de Empresas, Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain.
*Corresponding author: gcubillo@itcr.ac.cr
Submitted: June 20, 2025 / Approved: December 22, 2025
1. Introduction
Aer two decades since Ramsay (2004) opened Pandora’s box, little
progress has been made in understanding the customer/supplier
negotiation dynamics. ere is still a high degree of uncertainty su-
rrounding these processes, which remain of utmost relevance in the
global business context (Kelly & Chicksand, 2024; Krzywda, 2017).
However, there are many voices that, like Fells et al. (2015: 119),
highlight that “there is a lack of information about what actually oc-
curs during business negotiations in general”. e results obtained by
Ramsay (2004, 2007) regarding the negotiation behavior of suppliers
questioned the consensus on the suitability of adopting a win-win
approach for successful negotiation. However, years later Saorín-Ibo-
rra and Cubillo (2019), responding to Ramsay’s (2004) serendipity
(accidental discovery), demonstrated that the competitive behavior
of suppliers did not have to lead to the failure of negotiations. e
answer lay in the approach adopted for analyzing the impact of ne-
gotiating behavior. us, Saorín-Iborra and Cubillo (2019) propose
breaking with the integrative-competitive dichotomous approach,
widely used in literature, and analyzing negotiation behavior through
the combination of three kinds of negotiating actions (acceptable
competitive, inappropriate competitive, and integrative actions). e
set of the dierent actions could explain that, even displaying beha-
viors focused on reclaiming value, satisfactory agreements could be
reached for the customer.
Gunia et al. (2016) highlight that while many studies have examined
cultural inuences on negotiation, most are intracultural and limited
in scope. Although research on intercultural negotiations has grown,
key questions remain to better understand the relationship between
culture and negotiation. As noted by Brett, Gunia, and Gelfand (2023:
30), “research on culture and negotiation strategy exposes evidence of
intriguing patterns of cultural dierences in the use and eectiveness
of negotiation strategy around the world”.
One of the key inputs that stands out in previous works for its negati-
ve inuence on the value creation in intercultural negotiations, is the
so-called cultural distance (Gunia et al., 2016). In this sense, focu-
sed on the operations management eld, Ribbink and Grimm (2014)
concluded that cultural dierences not only inuence directly supply
chain joint prot levels, but also moderate the eect of cooperative
bargaining strategies on joint prots.
us, although the evidence found pointed to a consensus that cul-
tural similarity is associated with integrative negotiation behaviors
and, consequently, with the creation of value, works such as Fang
et al. (2004) were surprising in discovering that cultural similarity
does not always lead to successful negotiations. Once again, the de-
bate was served and new questions pending to be answered arose,
highlighting the clear need to continue deepening the analysis of
the negotiation dynamics, and particularly the kind of negotiating
J. Technol. Manag. Innov. 2025. Volume 20, Issue 4
4
ISSN: 0718-2724 - Journal of Technology Management & Innovation - www.jotmi.org
is journal and its contents are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0)
behavior displayed. is need becomes even more relevant when re-
cognizing that negotiation is not merely a transactional practice, but
rather a core component of the rm’s strategic processes, especially
in contexts such as supply chain management, internationalization,
and long-term value creation (Arvanitis, 2021; OrtigueiraSánchez
& Stein, 2022). OrtigueiraSánchez and Stein (2022) further reinfor-
ce this perspective, showing that strategic factors -such as planning,
formalization, and the use of negotiation support tools- signicantly
inuence negotiation performance in SMEs at trade fairs.
Additionally, Córdova et al. (2012) emphasize that in the mining logis-
tics sector, negotiation frameworks aligned with innovation strategies
and corporate objectives are crucial to achieving operational eciency
and sustainable partnerships, conrming negotiation as a strategic ma-
nagement tool rather than a purely operational interaction.
is is very important given that negotiation behavior is understood
as the main determinant of the negotiation outcome (Fisher et al.,
1983; Ghauri, 2003; Lax and Sebenius, 1986; Saorín-Iborra, 2006;
Weiss, 1993). Besides that, globalization has led to a signicant in-
crease in intercultural negotiations at all levels including politics, de-
fense, and business (Gunia et al., 2016), including supply chains (Rib-
bink & Grimm, 2014), and, therefore, understand how the negotiators
behave and why, is key to the success of international transactions.
From the previous arguments, with the objective of better unders-
tanding the negotiation behavior in customer/supplier negotiations
in the face of the questions raised as a result of Ramsay’s serendipity
(2004), and focusing on an intercultural context, the aim of this study
is to explore - from the perspective of the customer and analyzing
negotiation behavior from the set of the dierent actions proposed by
Saorín-Iborra and Cubillo (2019) - how cultural similarity inuences
the behavior of suppliers, and more specically in the combination
of negotiating actions used. For this purpose, a study was carried out
on 21 in-depth interviews to buyers involved in customer/supplier ne-
gotiations in the consumer products industry in Costa Rica, with 7 of
the in-depth interviews being intracultural and 14 being intercultural.
e main research question guiding this study is: How does cultural
similarity inuence suppliers’ negotiating actions? Accordingly, the
objective of this research is to analyze whether cultural similarity
leads suppliers to adopt a particular combination of negotiating ac-
tions -integrative, acceptable competitive, or inappropriate competi-
tive- within the context of international business negotiations.
2. Literature Review
2.1. Breaking with the dichotomous approach in the analysis of ne-
gotiation behavior
Negotiation behavior has been analyzed from a dichotomous ap-
proach which makes the exclusive distinction between integrative
and competitive or distributive negotiation behaviors (Fisher et al.,
1983; Lewicki, 2009; Lewicki & Litterer, 1985; Neale & Bazerman,
1991; Walton & McKersie, 1965), which have been associated with
the value creation and value reclaiming respectively (Lax & Sebenius,
1986).
However, although the work of Carnevale et al. (1993) was one of the
timid attempts to break with this dichotomous approach, it was really
the work by Saorín-Iborra (2008) and its subsequent development in
Saorín-Iborra and Cubillo (2019) that represents a clear break with it.
e premise is that the dichotomous perspective does not identify the
varied nuances of negotiation dynamics, since pure competitive and
pure integrative negotiation behaviors are scarcely displayed. us,
based on the basic agreed-upon premise that in every negotiation
there is a tension between value creating and value reclaiming (Lax
and Sebenius, 1986), these authors argue that the set of negotiating
actions (integrative and competitive) will result in dierent interme-
diate negotiation behaviors that will determine dierent negotiation
outcomes (Saorín-Iborra, 2008; Saorín-Iborra & Cubillo, 2019).
erefore, according to Saorín-Iborra and Cubillo (2019), in this
work we understand negotiation behavior as a combination of com-
munication actions, both verbal and non-verbal, integrative and/or
competitive, that negotiators use with the purpose of managing their
interdependent relationship. Consequently, negotiation behavior can
be classied “within a continuum that ranges from the extremes of
pure competitive to pure integrative behavior with competition, so
competition, compromise and collaboration between these extremes”
(Saorín-Iborra & Cubillo, 2019: 54).
Each negotiation behavior within the continuum is dened by the
combination of three kinds of negotiating actions (acceptable com-
petitive, integrative, and inappropriate competitive actions) (Saorín-
Iborra & Cubillo, 2019). us, while these authors rely on the integra-
tive actions proposed by Adair and Brett (2005), Bolman et al. (2000),
Kim et al. (2005) and Saorín-Iborra (2008), eliminating the tautolo-
gies found in them, in relation to actions with a competitive nature,
Saorín-Iborra and Cubillo (2019) are focused on the actions proposed
by Lewicki and Robinson (1998), although distinguishing between
acceptable competitive and inappropriate competitive actions. Spe-
cically, they dene acceptable competitive actions as those that in
the proposal of Lewicki and Robinson (1998) are considered traditio-
nal competitive bargaining, characterizing the rest of the actions as
inappropriate competitive. erefore, according to Saorín-Iborra and
Cubillo (2019: 55), the dierent intermediate negotiation behaviors
within the continuum are dened as follows:
• “Pure Integrative Behavior: Very high use of integrative actions,
with very low or no use of acceptable competitive actions and no
inappropriate actions.
• Collaboration: Prevalence of integrative actions, with few accep-
table competitive actions and no inappropriate actions.
• Compromise Behavior: Frequent use of integrative actions with
moderate use of acceptable competitive actions and absence of
inappropriate competitive actions.
• So Competition: Use of integrative actions with frequent use
of acceptable competitive actions and few inappropriate compe-
titive actions.
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