Just thought about this question, see I haggled with a stall owner I see every time at a local comic con I go every year, lovely chap and we always have a little cheeky back and forth about certain figures or collectibles.
What about you? Did you ever haggle once for a particular thing you liked? Or are you the straight person who buys it up front?
I’d like to know!
Not until I visited Vietnam. We hit it off with our hotel manager, hung out a bunch. He told us it’s part of the culture, you’re supposed to do it. You’re going to get offered the price that’s three times what’s considered reasonable. The third offer should get it where it’s supposed to be and that’s where a reasonable person stops haggling. He said some very unpleasant people always take it too far and people don’t want to do business of any kind with people like that. He also said there’s a different price for foreigners than there is for locals. When we’d go out with him, he’d insist on paying, ostensibly because he’d get that local price. Of course, it’s more complicated because we eventually learned they get kickbacks for bringing customers in.
Well this explain my vietnamese neighbour’s behaviour, she’s always complaining about store prices and trying to get stuff discounted. Her day is made if something was on sale, even if it wasn’t something she needed. It feels like a win for her
A lot of this is old world vs. new world culture in general. Even South of the border, where cultures have been more preserved, there are more shops and carts and little family businesses where this stuff is an option which exists almost nowhere in America now.
Yes for sure, a farmer or artisan dealing in smaller volume knows their costs, and will deal for bulk buy etc. Modern corporate sellers know their fixed cost of procurement, warehousing, profit required, and logistics costs, so the price is the price…unless you can deal at the upper corp level for huge buys
Yes, and, in the case of a place like Vietnam, corporate goods are openly counterfeited so they become something available at small shops. This is true with clothes, books, music, etc. In the larger business models, sellers don’t have agency over their selling prices. They’re reduced to mere middlemen.