NYT: Even at Megastores, Hagglers Find No Price Is Set in Stone
SAN FRANCISCO — Shoppers are discovering an upside to the down economy. They are getting price breaks by reviving an age-old retail strategy: haggling.
Controlling Authority
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Recent Comments
March 24, 2008 at 4:15 pm |
While living in Canada in the early 1990’s, I read an article in the Globe and Mail that urged citizens to do this very thing–ask for a better price. They even provided the one sentence script: Is this the best price you can give me? I’ve been trying it ever since, & it works a lot of the time!
March 24, 2008 at 8:44 pm |
I KNOW!!! I was going to email it to Jeremy who got no better deal. I told him, just ask, “Is that the best price you can give me?” but it did not work. As I said, Eric should be in charge of all haggling — he is the king.
March 25, 2008 at 9:39 am |
The NYT article says Best Buy designed its checkout procedures to facilitate a haggled price. If that action was deliberate, I wonder if other corporations will follow suit. For example, since Best Buy competes in a market with elastic demand for electronics, would the haggling model work for foodstuffs where there is inelastic demand? Can you negotiate down the price of a burger at McDonald’s? A bottle of milk at the supermarket?
It seems like haggling would serve more social good if poor Americans could drive down the price of essential foodstuffs so that millions wouldn’t have to go hungry.
March 26, 2008 at 12:06 am |
I was lame in my bargaining, so I shouldn’t be an evaluator of how well “Is that the best price you can give me?” works.