When Waiting Pays: How Unexpected Delays Can Change the Outcome of a Deal

Conventional wisdom holds that making customers wait during negotiations—an experience some customers already dislike—reduces conversion rates by frustrating customers into walking away. But new research from Duke's Fuqua School of Business reveals the opposite: unexpected delays in bargaining increase the likelihood a deal closes, ultimately leading to higher sales. 

In “Getting a Break in Bargaining: An Upside of Time Delay,” Fuqua’s Preyas Desai and Pranav Jindal of the Indian School of Business found that unplanned pauses during negotiations—say, when the seller steps away to "talk to the manager,” like in a famous scene of the movie, Fargo—function as a temporary friction in the bargaining process. Rather than derailing the interaction, buyers often tolerate the interruption and end up assigning a higher value to the product.

In other words, delays in bargaining—often considered an added cost—may expand the overall economic outcomes of a negotiation. In markets where negotiated pricing is an accepted practice rather than an exception—for example with car purchases—these frictions can lead to higher profits for firms and, potentially, more satisfied customers.

“Contrary to standard thinking, increasing consumers’ costs during a negotiation—when those costs arise unexpectedly—could ironically result in higher sales,” said Desai, the Spencer R. Hassell Professor at Fuqua. “Our very foundational beliefs about how bargaining works need to be rethought.” 

Rethinking what drives a buyer’s willingness to pay

For decades, economists viewed a buyer’s willingness to pay for a good or service as stable—something determined before negotiations even begin. Bargaining simply allowed sellers to sort customers: those with higher willingness to pay end up paying more, while the others pay less.

“That’s the classic power of price discrimination,” Desai explained. “But the assumption has always been that what buyers are willing to pay is fixed in their minds.” 

Desai and Jindal challenged that notion. In their research, they examined whether the bargaining process itself—specifically, an unexpected delay—changes how much buyers value the product.

Across multiple controlled experiments, they consistently found that when a seller’s response is delayed in a way the buyer does not anticipate, buyers become more likely to complete the transaction, and—sometimes—are willing to pay more for the product.

Why unexpected delays matter

The researchers tested scenarios where buyers bargained with a seller who occasionally delayed a response. For instance, the seller paused unexpectedly with a message that they had to “take an important phone call.”

In one experiment, purchase likelihood jumped from 64% under fixed pricing to 87% under bargaining with an unexpected delay—a  36% increase in conversion.

Importantly, when buyers were anticipating delays before negotiations began, the effect of purchase likelihood disappeared.

“If buyers know upfront that bargaining will be slow, many will avoid it or walk away,” Desai said. “But when the delay comes as a surprise, they stick with it.” 

Desai pointed out that car dealerships have long intuited this. Salespeople routinely disappear to “talk to the manager,” and callers seeking a price quote are often told they “must come in”.

These pauses introduce friction and additional cost for buyers, but perhaps also some subconscious reassessment of value. “The customer has invested time and effort, and that affects their mindset,” Desai said.

Three studies on bargaining

Across three studies—some in-person with students, others online with more than 400 U.S. adults—the researchers varied bargaining conditions and tracked realized purchase decisions for everyday products such as mugs, tumblers, and USB drives.

Key findings across experiments:

• Bargaining with no delay: the results looked similar to fixed pricing.
• Bargaining with an unexpected delay: consistently increased purchase likelihood.
• A longer delay (90 seconds) sometimes raised the final transaction price, not just whether buyers completed a purchase.
• When the delay was known in advance, purchase likelihood fell back to normal levels.

These results suggest that unexpected interruptions alter how buyers interpret their own actions and how they assess the product’s value.

“When people wait longer than they planned, they might justify their own decision to wait by thinking, ‘I must really want this,’” Desai explained.  “This could result in a change in how they value the product. Another possibility is that they may also feel they’ve already invested time—what we call the sunk cost effect—so they carry on. Both psychological processes may be at work here.” 

Some buyers also reported appreciating the extra time to think, suggesting that delays may sometimes support better decision-making.

Why bargaining adds more value

The research revealed that bargaining goes beyond redistributing value between seller and buyer—it can create additional economic value. When the researchers estimated profit effects, they found that as much as 40% of the additional profit from bargaining with delays came not from standard ‘price discrimination’—charging buyers differently according to their willingness-to-pay —but from buyers valuing the product more during the process itself.

And when buyers voluntarily pay more, it suggests that the additional deliberation may generate perceived value for them as well, Desai said.

“In addition to the experiments, we ran some surveys of consumers, and what we found was that consumers sometimes find that these delays give them more time to think about what they are doing,” he said. “They make a more thoughtful choice, and the seller makes more money. So, all in all, the pie may become larger.”

Insights for businesses: Know your customers

For businesses, the findings offer a practical but carefully balanced message: time can be a strategic tool in negotiations, but not in every situation.

For example, big box stores selling thousands of items cannot negotiate prices with every customer, Desai noted, because the bargaining cost for the seller becomes prohibitively high.

But businesses that can afford the negotiation cost, like auto dealerships and subscription services, may benefit from naturally occurring pauses that give customers a moment to reflect. These pauses can allow buyers to reassess the product’s value, or simply provide space to deliberate more clearly.

“You have to know your customers,” Desai said.

“If buyers strongly dislike bargaining, then delays become an anticipated cost, and they get turned off. But in markets where negotiation is normal, small, unplanned breaks can help complete transactions.”