The average shopper can't remember a time when fixed prices weren't the norm. After all, it's been well over a century since rounds of haggling was the way goods and services changed hands. Fixed prices were introduced in the early 1800s as an attractive new feature that could save consumers time, money, and emotional energy, and were a great benefit to merchants, too.
The benefits stuck, even in an era of e-commerce when consumers assume online stores offer lower prices without brick and mortar overhead and when comparison shopping is easier than ever.
However, a new startup called PriceWaiter is bringing haggling back to e-commerce, and it's bringing a refreshingly human element to the online marketplace. The approach also highlights three behavioral economics concepts that play a big role in selling goods online:
Personalization
PriceWaiter allows merchants to offer a personalized price in addition to their usual fixed price. Customers can add an item to their shopping cart, pay, and ship like normal. Or, if customers don't want to pay the fixed price, they can simply click the PriceWaiter button and make an offer. The merchant accepts, counteroffers, or rejects that offer, and then customers can complete the purchase in a few clicks straight from their email.
It's a shopping experience defined by the needs of the individual, a natural extension of increasingly personalized marketing campaigns tailored by online data collected by companies like Facebook and Google.