Haggling on the web
I’ll give you £20, £30, £25, Deal
The web is great for virtually everything (and I mean ‘virtually’). In a post I wrote a long, long time ago (in relation to the age of this blog), I proposed the age-old question of ‘What can’t you do on the web?‘. Well I’ve thought of something – Haggling.
In the West, Haggling doesn’t play much of a part in every-day shopping, eg:
Checkout Clerk: That’s £38
Customer: Oh no, that’s far too expensive
Checkout Clerk: Well you’ll have to put some back then, hurry up there’s a queue forming…
Customer: Well, how about I’ll give you £25 for it all?
Checkout Clerk: What? No… you can’t do that!
Customer: Come on! OK, £30 – that’s as high as I’ll go…
Checkout: Fine… Security!
… there’s nothing wrong with exaggerating a situation to make a point. It doesn’t really work. Sometimes it’s possible to get a free piano stool or cheese grater thrown in with the deal but generally, down to the forces of commercialism and capitalism – a price is a price is a price.
However, in Eastern, Arabic and to be honest, the majority of non-English speaking countries I’ve visited; haggling is a part of everyday life. And it’s fun, it livens up the shopping experience!
Now what about online?
Imagine going to Amazon, looking at the latest Katie Price autobiography (not that I’ve ever…) then clicking on a button entitled ‘I only want to pay…‘. How could that work? Perhaps Amazon in their infinite wisdom could create an algorithm that takes your proposition and finds a midway point between that, the buy-in price and selling price of the product, so as to still make a profit while making you feel that you’ve cheated the system? Yes I know it sounds absurd but I’m open to suggestions here.
I’ve read about (having never encountered) websites that flash a javascript box up when you try to leave the site claiming ‘If you’re not happy with the prices here, please ring us on this number and we can offer you a special price, just for you..’ or something along those lines. Personally that would annoy the hell out of me, but does strike me as a very close comparison to the Thai stall owner chasing you down the street to buy one of his mystical flutes… that has happened.
So, perhaps that is one thing that, up to now, hasn’t been achieved on the net. A price, is a price, is a price. Not that I’m complaining, if you look well enough, everything you could desire can be found at an excellent price, normally at Amazon!
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