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An Old Dominion 91����Ƶ doctoral candidate and two faculty members were recently awarded Broadening Research and Instruction in Negotiations Grant (BRING) funding from the Strome College of Business’ . The BRING awards offer ODU faculty and students funding for their negotiations research and community outreach.

This year’s recipients, the second group of BRING awardees, are August Immel, a Ph.D. student in the English Department; and marketing Professors Veronica Thomas and Rhett Epler (pictured above).

“The committee was very impressed with the quality of their projects,” said Aaron Arndt, marketing professor and chair of the Thurmond School. “Each covers an important topic for negotiations and has a strong research design. We really look forward to learning their results.”

Immel’s project is titled “Applying the Rhetoric Tools of C.S. Peirce to Business Negotiations.” Immel will explore the shared meaning of language used when discussing values and ethical standards. Using a sample of real businesses, he will look at how different parties understand the same words in different ways and how shared meaning, or lack thereof, impacts negotiated agreement.

Thomas’ proposal is titled “Wearing Your Success on Your Sleeve: How Salesperson Luxury Consumption Affects Consumers’ Perceptions.” She will examine how a salesperson’s display of personal luxury (such as wearing a Gucci belt) in non-luxury selling contexts influences consumers’ perceptions of the salesperson and product pricing.

Her research will test whether wearing luxury items “will cause customers to feel they are not getting a good deal” and whether these items can alter stereotypes about salespeople from stigmatized groups – which might be advantageous.

Thomas was awarded a BRING grant in 2022 for a project that studied “The Influence of a Salesperson's Favor Request on Consumers' Evaluation of the Negotiation.” 

Epler is working on a project titled, “Are Sales Competition Videos a Valid Data Source for Negotiations Research?” In a sales context, negotiations are ultimately a conversation between a salesperson and a customer. However, Epler notes, sales researchers tend to avoid studying how selling unfolds in real time, probably because it is difficult to obtain recordings of sales conversations.

To improve access to sales conversations, Epler’s proposal will investigate the conditions in which student sales competitions, which are widely available and intended to be realistic simulations of selling encounters, can be used as a proxy for real sales conversations.

Epler will explore whether the theory that sales competitions should be equivalent to studying salespeople who are early in their career, college educated and selling professional products/services is true in practice.

The Thurmond School of Professional Sales and Negotiations, which was established in 2022 with a $6 million endowment from Dick Thurmond ’76, specializes in teaching negotiation, personal selling, and communication skills to students, industry professionals and the community.