Negotiators Turn Choices Into Measurements

Giving someone choices is usually framed as a courtesy.

A restaurant offers several entrées because different customers want different meals. A contractor might quote several levels of finish because customers have different budgets.

But choices can do something else.

They can reveal information.

Negotiators have a technique called Multiple Equivalent Simultaneous Offers, usually shortened to MESO. Instead of putting one offer on the table, a negotiator presents several packages that are roughly equivalent in value to them, but balance their components differently.

Imagine negotiating a job offer where several arrangements work equally well for the employer.

One provides higher compensation but less flexibility. Another trades some compensation for greater control over schedule and location. A third offers more responsibility and a clearer path toward advancement.

If a candidate quickly gravitates toward flexibility, the employer has learned something about how they value flexibility relative to compensation. A preference for greater responsibility reveals something different.

The offers haven’t merely provided options.

They have performed a small experiment.

The choices have to measure something

There is an important catch.

Suppose a company wants to know whether customers respond better to red or blue logos.

Half the customers see a blue dog. The other half see a red cat.

The red cat gets considerably more clicks.

Something has been measured, but what?

Perhaps red attracts more attention. Perhaps people prefer cats. Perhaps one drawing is simply better. Several variables changed at once, so the result cannot distinguish among them.

Comparing the same cat rendered in red and blue would isolate the question much better. Even then, showing both versions side by side could change the behavior being measured: people now know they are being asked to think about color.

The important question isn’t simply whether choices were offered. It is what information those choices make observable.

Why MESO is interesting

That is what makes MESO more than presenting someone with three packages.

The alternatives are constructed deliberately. They are approximately equivalent from one side of the negotiation while varying dimensions whose value to the other side is uncertain.

Three project proposals might have similar costs while emphasizing schedule, scope, or quality differently. A client’s preference can reveal which tradeoff carries the most value.

Add too many unrelated differences, though, and the preference becomes harder to interpret.

The client still chose something.

They just told you less through the choice.

A/B tests have the same problem

A/B testing looks quite different from negotiation, but it shares the same constraint.

An online store can test whether free shipping changes purchasing behavior. But if the free-shipping version also gets a redesigned checkout page, different product photography, and a promotional banner, increased sales no longer tell us which change mattered.

The test produced a winner without producing much knowledge.

Fishing with different lures

The same distinction appears in a much less formal setting.

Several identical lines mostly increase the chance of catching a fish. Different lures can also reveal what the fish are responding to.

But if one line has a red spoon near the surface and another a silver spinner running deep, a strike could reflect lure, color, depth, retrieve, or some combination of them.

The lines become useful measurements only to the extent that the differences between them can be interpreted.

A winner isn’t necessarily an answer

A menu accommodates preferences. MESO can expose them. An A/B test can reveal how people respond to a particular change. Different fishing rigs can reveal something about conditions beneath water we cannot see.

In every case, the outcome is visible while the cause behind it is not.

Carefully designed choices can make part of that hidden information observable. Poorly designed choices can produce an equally decisive winner while leaving us with little idea why it won.

Sometimes the interesting result isn’t which option won.

It’s what the choice allowed us to learn.