I work for a large corporation in the consumer goods segment. We have a huge and procurement operation, with over a hundred collaborators between negotiaton and logistics. Some with very extensive experience on the categories they negotiate.
Recently there has been a pressure to study how can we improve our negotiations using game theory. As a data scientist on the department I've been tasked with finding possible applications and leading a project to implement them.
Although I have a bachelors degree in statistics I've never studied game theory, so my first step was looking for books and articles to understand the concepts.
It seems that everything I find is one of two types of content:
- Short material aimed at people with no background in math, that just explains game theory concepts and their applications to a general negotiation.
- Solved exercises or textbook examples that use a very simplified representation of a real negotiation to define optimal strategies for the players.
Neither of those helps me too much, as the first kind is common knowledge for anyone with a carreer in negotiation and the second is usually so simplified that I can't think of how to apply it to a real problem we face.
So, I have two questions:
- Where could I look for pratical applications of game theory in this industry context?
- Is it realistic to assume that negotiations conducted by people with a lot of experience in a category can be improved by modeling and "solving" a game?
Sorry if this doesn't fit here, any direction is appreciated.
You might try The Art and Science of Negotiation by Howard Raiffa, a negotiation book by a brilliant game theorist.