Like I said about strategic compromise, it does not have to be on a corporate or political level.
In this case, turning down the chance to buy tickets to the circus led to an offer to buy a few candy bars.
And it worked. It worked on a professor of psychology that specializes in persuasion.
Of course, I would do the same in selling a car. Or selling anything, for that matter.
Was that how the Boy Scout got me to buy his candy bars? Was his retreat from the five-dollar request to the one-dollar request an artificial one that was intentionally designed to sell candy bars? As one who has still refused to discard even his first Scout merit badge, I genuinely hope not. But whether or not the large-request-then-smaller-request sequence was planned, its effect was the same, It worked. And because it works, the rejection-then-retreat technique can and will be used purposely by certain people to get their way.
-Robert Cialdini, Influence