nonverbal communication : interaction between a buyer and a seller

NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION : INTERACTION BETWEEN A BUYER AND A SELLER

1 2014 Human Behaviour Academy www.hbacademy.org.uk

NONVERBAL

COMMUNICATION:

INTERACTION BETWEEN A

BUYER AND A SELLER

By

Lim Min Yih

Wee Soon Ming

Cedric Choong Ee Chun

Leow Chee Seng

Published By



Published by Human Behaviour Academy Ltd

6 2 Larch Gardens, Manchester

E-mail : [email protected]

Website : www.hbacademy.org.uk

Copyright 2014 Human Behaviour Academy Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or any

means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information

storage or retrieved system, whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher.

First Edition June 2014

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publishing Data

Min Yih, Lim; Soon Ming, Wee, Ed Chun, Cedric Choong; Chee Seng, Leow

NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION : INTERACTION BETWEEN A BUYER AND A

SELLER

1. Body Language 2. Non Verbal 3. Communication 4. Gesture 5. Business

6. Consumer Behaviour

BF 637 N66



Table of Content

Table of Content 3

Important Note 4

Introduction 5

Analysis 7

Conclusion 31

References 32



IMPORTANT

Before Starting, you should watch the video

Ah Wing Malaysias Number 1 Salesman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LhzdsdSf0s



Introduction

In this modern society, hiding self emotions have been a common practice in order to act

professional or to protect himself over exposure towards treats from outside as one may view

showing what his or her taught may be seen as violate of personal space or in some eastern

society view as ignorant. Many are taught by their parents and culture to hide their true

feeling despite they would be having extreme reaction if it is not kept.

However, there are still trait of the subconscious body movement, norm and behavior which

would reflects the real situation of an individual which is known as non-verbal

communication. By understanding and mastering well this skills it would be big advantage in

judging and decision making of any situation no matter it is personal or working environment

in order to ensure everything serve the best interest of all especially in avoiding conflict with

other party.

In this sharing, we would like to present with 6 major area of non verbal communication which

are::

I . Eye: Soul of Window

ii. Face: Unravelling an Enigma

iii. Touch: A bonding Interaction

iv. Hands: The Centre of Power

v. Arms: Defensive & Opening Channel

vi. Feet: The Emotion Expresser

By analyzing the six areas of implied expression we would able better determine the real

thought or inner feeling of an individual thus will sure be beneficial to our everyday life.

Nonverbal communication is behaviour, other than spoken or written communication,

that creates or represents meaning. In other words, it includes facial expressions, body



movements, and gestures. Nonverbal communication is talking without speaking a word. It is

very effective, maybe even more so than speech.

In this assignment, a video about consumer purchase behavior is selected and

analyzed to understand how consumer behaves when making a purchase. The video selected

for this assignment is about a buyer looking for a Cannon D7 camera in the shopping mall.

The first salesmen he met quoted him RM 4950 for the camera. However, he was not

interested with the deal because it was too expensive. He then continues surveying other

camera shops.

On the other hand, the salesman starts his strategy to convince that guy who rejected

his offer. First, he disguise into another salesman and coded the same price to the buyer to

build up a perception that the market price of the camera is around RM 4950. Second he

disguise into a lady to attract the buyer attention and continue emphasized that the price RM

4950 is the best price in the market. Finally, he gets a guy to fake a purchase of the camera in

front of the buyer to build up the trust and confidence of the buyer toward the deal. In the

end, the buyer is convinced with the deal and purchase the camera from the salesman.

Throughout the whole buying process, the expressions of the buyer and the salesman

is been captured and analyzed in detain to understand the behaviour of the buyer and the

salesman.



Analysis

Eyes have been seen as clue of dominance. It is an fundamental method in

understanding body language which always starts with eye signal as eyes would be seen as

how other individuals look at us for the first sight which also can be known as First

Impression or to be exact First Eye Impression. Thus, by really look at a person eyes

response to us such as the eye contact,, eye size would indicates the real and implied response

of a person to us which eventually very useful to our everyday life.

The picture shows as same as shown in the slide is showing the response of the sales mans

customer towards him before and after he is getting ready to communicate with the sales

man:

Before customer ready to talk with sales man

In picture one, we can see that customer and the salesman eyes pupil size is normal

which means that they are in the normal state of mind. However, the customer eye contact is

focusing on the store accessories which mean he is assessing the store whether it fits his

requirement of purchasing his goods before proceeds to his sales man,

The sales man eyes keep staring at his customer indicating he seeks attention from his

customer and wish to start the interaction with his customer as soon as he can. However, he

still needs to wait his customer to get ready for this interaction.



After the customer is ready to communicate with his sales man.

In the picture, we found out that both customer and salesman are ready for the

conversation which can be seen which means his customer has ready for the second steps

which is to interacts with the stores sales man.

Another example would be picture of eye contact when business encounter, where

we can see the clear eye contact being made by both party for a succesful deal.

Eye contact of both party for a succesfull deal



This scene depicts that the buyer is looking and scouting for camera through the

display glass pane of one of the outlets. From the above captured scene, the buyer has his

eyes gazing and looking attentively to the displays. His eyes were direct gazing through the

displayed camera. This shows that he is looking steadily with great curiosity, interest,

pleasure or wonder. In this case, it would be more of an interest based in the context of the

scene itself, as the buyers intention is to get a camera. At the same time, there were lips

motions that were demonstrated by the buyer in this scene. The first scene caption shows that

the buyer is licking his lips, where it could possibly means that he is showing a sign of

nervousness. The second scene caption shows that the buyer is doing a lip compression,

which indicates he might be feeling a little of anxiety, prior of purchasing his camera.

Eye brown can also be seen as one of the major indicators in reading the hints from

eyes. By squinting eye browns , it may indicates the disbelief or uncertainty of the

information receive by the receipients which can be seen in Picture 4.



Squinting eye brown

From Picture 4, we would able to see the unexceptance of price given by the sales man which

the customer eye browns naturally squinting. If this situation happens in real life we should

take some positive action to ensure our customer for confident towards our statement. Many

has use value added features such as free gifts, extra service and longer warranty other than

comparing prices with their competitors which would only confuse customer and may result

doubt against the quality of the product.



In this scene, it shows that the seller is displaying a lopsided smile. Also known as the

twisted smile, it is shown when one side of the lips moves upwards and the other side moves

downwards. The lopsided smile is often interpreted as mixed emotions. This smile usually

gives a signal of sarcasm, embarrassment and irony. In this scene, the seller is most probably

showing a signal of sarcasm with his lopsided smile.

The sales person in the figure shows a lopsided smile while pushing forward a

Cannon 7D camera to the customer. His eye brown is raised and he looks directly to his

customer indicates that he puts all his attention to the customer. His body posture is straight

with his chest face upward shows that he is full of confidence in making the sales. One side

of his lips moves upward and another side move downward. This smile is known as the

lopsided smile or the twisted smile. The smile is interpreted as a mix of both positive and

negative emotion. The positive side shows that the sales person is happy because he found a

customer who has interested to buy a camera while the negative side is that he also feels sorry

for the customer to pay for the overpriced camera.

This scene shows that the buyer is displaying The Sneer look as his facial

expression to the seller. The action of a sneer can be observed when the muscle at the side of

the face contracts to draw the lips corner sideward towards the ears, producing a sneering

dimple in the cheek. This is expression usually gives a signal of sarcasm. This expression was



observed in this scene, when the buyer is trying to negotiate the price of the camera with the

seller. The buyer is observed to be trying his attempt to lower down the price offered by the

seller.

As Friedrich Niestsche says the mouth may lie, but the face it makes nontheless tells

the truth. Thus, fro quote above we would seen that face has been an intersting part of our

body sub concious reaction which allows people to detects the real meaning one wish to

convey since the acient time. Acient civilization such as Eygpt and China even treat face

reading which also known as physiognomy as a profession in their society. Thus ,we would

seen the importance and accurancy of understanding one real emotion and thought which is

extremely improtant in reseaching real effectiveness of our marketing activities.

From the picture we can seen the disagreement of customer towards statement delivers by

sales man due to low price bargain.

From the eye brown which was lowered we would judge that this customer is not

statisfied with the statement of the salesman which stated that he is giving lowest price where

we would see the facial muscle is contract and eyebrowns are lowered. We would also seen

the diapearence of lips which indicated the anxiety level is high for the customer as he is not

getting enough price bargain from the sales man.



In this kind of facialexpression, we shall calm our customer down such as treating

him with some drink to smoothen the situation by only continue conversation when he show

positive sign of less anxiety from his eye brown and more visible lips.

The buyer is showing disappearing lips where his lips were starting to disappear and

tightened when there is stress. The disappearing lips are often associated with stress or

anxiety. The lips will be in the shape of upside-down U. This occurs when the buyer was told

about the price of the camera by the seller. At the same time, it is noticed that the buyer is

crossing his arms after the seller refuse to decrease the price of the camera. The gesture of

arm crossing is usually associated with being defensive, disagreeable, and resistant or

guarded. This shows that the buyer is feeling reluctant and disagreeing with the price offered

by the seller as he is hoping a reduced price for the camera that he wish to purchase.

The person in the picture shows a doubtful expression after finding out that the

Cannon 7D cost about RM 4950 after discount. He is not sure about the market price of the

camera hence he shows a doubtful look. The shape of the person lips change from loose to

tight and finally disappear. This indicates that he is in stress and not interested in the offer. In

addition, he also shows a defensive cross arm gesture when talking to the sales person. This

indicates that he is uncomfortable with the sales person and defensive toward the offer. The

motion of touching his arm with his hand shows that he is trying to comfort himself by self-

touching after finding out that the price of the Cannon 7D model camera was so expensive.



In this scene, the seller is showing two rather significant expression which involved

with the eyes and the lips. The seller is showing a gazing eyes in this scene, where he is

looking steadily as the seller walk off. As explained in the previous scene, this shows that the

seller is having a certain degree of interest towards the buyer as he is determined to have the

buyer to buy the camera from him. At the same time, he is showing a loose lip. Loose lips

usually occur when a person is in either relaxed or depressed state. In this case, the emotion

projection could be depressed, as there is a certain degree of depression occurred to the seller

when the buyer refuses to buy the camera from him initially.



In this scene, there is a common gesture that can be observed in two scenarios. The above

two scenarios indicates that the buyer and the seller is demonstrating open hands in two

scenarios. This gesture is usually associated with breaking the communication barrier and

creates trust. This gesture can also come with a sense of confidence. In these both scenarios,

both buyer and seller is explaining and demonstrating their confidence in their explanation or

description of then product, which is the camera, and is trying to create trust and mutual

understanding with the opposite party. At the same time, the first scenario also shows that the

buyer have his palm facing up, which indicates a gesture of friendliness and willingness to

accept. As depicted in the scene, the seller is showing this gesture to be friendly with the

buyer and trying to capture his attention with his explanation.



In this scene, there is several non-verbal gestures that the buyer has demonstrated. In

the both scenarios in this scene, the buyer is rubbing his hands while deciding to purchase the

camera. The hand rubbing gesture occurs when something positive is being communicated. A

slow palm rubbing gesture, just as seen in this scene on the video is showing about a benefit

on oneself. This can explain the reason of this gesture by the buyer as he is thinking of his

benefit on buying the camera. Besides that, the first scenario shows that the buyer has his

eyes looking up. This indicates that he is visualizing or thinking to solve a problem, probably

the price of the camera in this case. In the second scenario, the buyers eyebrow is lowered,

which shows sign of concentration, thought and concern, This is well suited in the situation

where the buyer is thinking and considering about the camera and the price.

After doing a survey from 3 camera shop, he had come to a point to make a decision

on the camera purchase. The praying hand shown in the picture indicates that he is fully

concentrated on analyzing all the information gathered from the 3 surveys. It also reflects

confident of a person in decision making. His eye looking up means that he is visualizing or

making picture of his thought on buying the Cannon 7D model camera. In addition, the tight

lips indicate that he is in stress. All these expression are usually shown on people who is

about to make his final decision.

From the picture we would seen the reaction of nervous customer:



From the picture , we would seen that the customer is licking his lips, this can be seen

when a person gets newvous the mouth would get dries easily thus we would start to lick the

lips in order to create saliva. Thus if this symptoms occurs we should find a way we should

find solutions to ease our customr anxiety such as talking joke to the customer or waits

customer to be more confortable first only proceed to selling process.

Thus, we would seen how improtant in understanding the facial expression of a person as it

clearly reflects what is the real tought inside the persons mind which would be misjudge if

sole base on to verbal reaction a person gave to us and to act accroding in order to create

better commnucation & bunderstanding.

Touch can be seen as a action of increase the intimation among human beings as skin

can be seen as a most disperse organ in our human body and it is covering most part our

body. Touch is not only be seen a sign of comforting other but also a sign of level of intimate

relationship which difers by cultural background. This area of non verbal commucation can

be eseen as below:



Customer is comforting his sale man after rejecting his sale by touching his arm

From picture above, we would assume that salesman was dissapointed with his

customer decision in rejecting his offer despite such big amount of hard work has been put to

ensure this particular customer to ensure this particular customer buy his goods. His customer

turn out to confort him giving message that it is just a deal between them he can get other

customer that interest in his offer. Thus, touch that can be accepted by their culture will not

only enhance customer sales person relationship that would gradually enhance the probaility

that product is successfully marketed.

Since we are child we are used to seek attention from other to archive our purpose

which can include crying for attention in order get a toy, shaking out parent leg when going

to convinient store which would also seen as attention seekeer. This this case the sales girl

has touch his cutomer arm in order to seek his attention for buying her product. This would

results higher possibility as the man has got his atttention towards the sales girl and finally

at the end of the movie was persuaded to buy her product. This, success would likely link

to human natural sense as they are usually attracted when they are being touch especially by

opposite gender that would certainly bring different meaning difers from heritage and culture

of the society.



In this scene, it shows that the seller is trying to show care and interest to the buyer by

engaging the warm and friendly touch. This may probably be one of the ways the seller

portrays in order to obtain the attention of the seller. Looking by the reaction of the buyer, he

has misinterpreted this to be rather an expression of intimacy or even sexual interest. we

would seen the customer eyes sight was tuned to the direction of sales girl hand and mske

him thonk twice before rejecting her offer.

Hands can be seen as an important communication tool since pre-historic period

especially before the speech and word are created. Our ancestor would move their hand to

deliver their feelings to others such as excitemnt, showing dirction and agree/disagrement .

we as modern human being has also inherited this behavior from our ancestor where we

would observe our hand move subconciously when we are delivering our thought to

strengthen our message to our receiver such as pointing direction and showing

disagreemenet. Thus, by observing ones hand activity would help us in understanding the

real though of a person.

From the picture we would the sales man shows interst in offering his customer a

resonable deal when he count using abascus:



In picture, we can see that the salesman show interst in setting us the price when he is

putting up his hand showing the sign of thinking the price to be given to his customer. He

would find the intersting price by continuing counting using calculator to ensure the suitable

piece will be given.

His eyes combining with his hand is also look at the abascus is also indicates that the sales

man is giving a deep taught about he price setting that he should be done and he found it

intersting as this is his daily and he he need to balance up the price od his with his ot6her

competitor to ensure customer accepts this price offer.

In the picture, we would see the sales man pointing direction to his customer left and

right indicating his competitors store;



From the picture, we would see the salesman pointing left and right using his finger

after the customer rejected his offer, he had use it with his verbal communication where

covey a message You can try to look for whatever store around here, you will still find I am

cheapest which convey the confidence of this salesman towards the price he offered.

He has used to most widely understand and had been proctice non verbal communtion

method which is fingers point tyo the direction he wish to sentence subconciously.

In real marketing envoiroment, we shall also placed set our confidence towards the for

the price set towards the products we are going to market in order not to feel under other

compertitiors tricks.

Thus, by understanding the hand non verbal communication message we would certainly able

to understand the message convey to us more efficently while able to instills right non verbal

communication sign to attain effect we wish during our conversation.

Arm can be seen as a visible signal when we are conveying our conversation whrere we

would able to indicates a person comfort, discomfort and even confidence of the person that

we are dealing. It can be seen as an important tools for all of us in conveying our message

efficiently and usually the reaction of arm are being perform subconciously by a person as we

would put more attention to other part of our body rather than arm.

From the picture 11 we would able to see the expression of uncertainty from the salesman

when the customer is asking for loweer price:



From picture we would see that the palm of the sales man showing up with his arm opens

wide showing uncertainty of his ability to give this customer the better offer as requested. He

has no confidence and reluctantb to give cheaper price to this customer which indicate

Look, its out of my power, Sorry , cant help you out!

It would also results ustomer to understand the message sent out by the sales man and finally

results the customer to walk away and look for a better deal as both party can not arhieve the

agreable price in negogiation process,

From the Picture , we would able to monitor the self touching process :

From the picture, we would able observe the salesgirl action is self touching herself

by putting her right hand on top of her left ahnd and vice versa. This can be observed that it

would cut down the surface of contact of herself with the environment around her. It can be

seen as a defensive action by her in contacting with this same customer again and again as

she feels uneasy thus applying this gesture in calm herself down while entertaining this

customer as it is her job. The meesage wish to convey from this gesture would be come

and close the deal fast! I felt uneasy of you.

Thus, by understanding arm gesture we would able to better understand the real

message wish to convey by other members that would be convey by a person thus would able

us to have better control of our daily environment and ensuring better performace of us.

Leg can seen seen as one of the part acts most reflekls compares to our body, this can

be seen at our daily life where we would run for our life without having thought about

considering of run away for life. Thus, many body language specialise analyze their target

starting from leg to judge the real message sentence out by their targets.



This can be seen from pictures for confident walking style:

Both pictures are both the reaction of the sales man after he fails his negogiation and

on the way to change his identity. From the way he walk we would observe that both are

using tip toeing when he walks, his body and should are laid back which indicates that he has

confidence his skill in pursuading this customer to buy the camera from him. This gesture can

also be seen in the cat walk where the models showing the new designs from the designer

which would certainly attacts potential buyer from the confident shown by these models to

the productsthey are displaying.

We would also able to see the confident stand by this sales amn after he fail his

negogiation and changing his identity. This can be clearly seen in picture 15 where we would

see the legs apart and feet firmly planted on the ground which usually incicates dominance or

determination. In this case, it would be better observed as determination as the sales man is

showing his determination putting all the efforts in selling of this camera to the customer ,

this observation proven to be true when he keeps on changing his identity in order to get

another chance of negogiation with this customer until he sell of the camera to this particular

customer.



Thus, by analysizng a person behavior start from the feet would enable us to have a initial

picture of how the person is feeling thus enable them to act efficiently by changing our

behavior accotrding to results of our analyss.



The sales person in the figure demonstrates a confident walk. His body posture is

straight with the head straight up and eye looking forward observing everything in front of

him. Both of his arms swing naturally in a manner. His shoulders are slightly bent to the back

with his chest facing up. In addition, he also walks in a slow and comfortable manner. This

shows that he is not in a rush or nervous to get the job done. The walking style of the person

indicates that the he is full of confident on his strategy to convince the customer to buy the

Cannon 7D camera.



The guy in the picture shows a helpless expression because the price offered by the

sales person is same as the first offer. Both his hand are lifted up at chest level with his palm

facing upward. His shoulders is slightly rise and his face expression bewilderment. This

shows that he is not interested in the offer if the price remains the same. His eye looks away

further indicates that he is not interested in the deal. The tight lips and mouth pull down

shows that he is unhappy with the price.



The picture above shows the negotiation process between the buyer and the sales

person. The one on the left side is the buyer and the one on the right side is the sales person.

From the picture we can observe that the buyer trusts his finger toward the sales person and

ask the sales person to give him the best price he could offer. This shows that he is hoping to

get more discounts from the sales person and command him to offer the best price. On the

other hand, the sales person rises up his hand to show an open palm stop signal. This hand

gesture can be explained in two ways. First, the stop signal is use to ask the buyer to wait or

hold on because he needs to call his boss to ask for the best price. The stop signal also helps

to use to calm the buyer who request for discount. The second explanation indicates that the

open palm stop signal is use for defensive purpose. It is naturel that when people are pointing

something at us, we will automatically block it with our hand. Hence it is a defensive reaction

to protect ourselves from harm.



The guy in the picture show that he is in shock after looking at the salesman who

dresses like a lady. His expression starts with a surprise expression followed by disgust

expression. Based on the picture, his facial expression shows that his lips is loose, jaw

slightly drop down, eye wide open, eyebrow rise directly upward. All this indicates that he is

in shock. In addition, his body moves slightly backward to keep a distance from the salesman

who dresses like a girl.



The expression shown in the picture indicates that he is in the process of making the

decision whether to purchase the camera or not to purchase. The eye looking sideway

indicates that he is recalling all information gather from surveying the 3 camera shops. The

previous customer who bought the camera in front of him also further enhances his

confidence in the Cannon 7D model camera. The expression of licking his lips shows that he

is nervous and stress. In general, he is analyzing the price offer by the 3 different sales people

and tries to make a decision to buy from which camera shop.



At the end of the decision making process, he had decided to buy the Cannon 7D

model camera from the third sales person who dress like a lady. The picture above shows

that he is interested on the deal and agrees to take the offer. He expresses his expression of

agreement by nodding his head. His head was slightly tilted to one side when he agrees to

take the offer. This shows signals of interest and trust on the Cannon 7D model camera.



Conclusion

In conclusion, it would be very important for any of us to uinderstand well aboout non verbal

commuication as it is not only enable us to understand well about other thought but also

enable us better blend in any new environment or sudden situation. By understands and

analyze the six parts of bidy, we would have the real picturev of a person thought and reacts

efficiently according to their thoughts

\



Reference

1. Leow,C.S., Leong,V., & Adom,A., (2013). Body Language Exposed. Find out How Your

Body Can Betray You(1). Manchester, MT: Human Behavior Academy,

2. Gabbott. M,. & Hogg. G (2000). An empirical investigation of the impact of non-verbal

communication on service evaluation. European Journal of Marketing, 34, 384-439.

nonverbal communication : interaction between a buyer and a seller

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