Of course, this is just from this consumer's point of view. I can see the added value to the vendor, but since I'm only a consumer, it is only the consumers' perspective that affects me.
Now the information imbalance in a haggling situation is a bit different. He doesn't have to advertise the price he gives you, and so can worrying less about how his price will influence his competitors, and he knows at exactly what price he will make a sale. Just like with car dealers, if it's late in the month or year he might need to just move inventory and sell at cost. He has more confidence in your behavior so he can use his own operational information more effectively.
If you want to know more I suggest reading up on "Imperfect Information Market Failure." It's a pretty fundamental thing in economics.
Just to flip this around, should your boss be offended if they're not paying you the lowest amount you'd be willing to work for?
Of course, as morley pointed out in a separate reply, this seems like it may only be limited to art and memorabilia, which tend not to have a set value. If limited to these types of items, then Amazon's approach may make sense.
So amazon is borrowing from ebay and ebay is borrowing from amazon.
This is a personality... um... "quirk" on your part.
How? I'd try raising prices and allow offers, hoping that most customers don't even try to bargain for a lower price.
Adding the "Make and Offer" button for these kinds of items could increase transparency, as it keeps Amazon in the loop and all of their standard policies apply like free shipping, so you won't get into situations where you go offline, negotiate a price, then get hit by hidden shipping fees or something of the sort.
How is it more transparent to have products in your store where one customer pays the full price, another one pays 5% less and someone else pays 10% less.
The nice people working the registers at Target or Walmart have no authority to haggle with me, even if I wanted to do so. If there was an algorithm behind the scenes, either online or flat-out at the register, maybe haggling could make a comeback with big merchants.
Great.
No thanks.
Isn't fairness of price decided by the property owner that is offering their property up for sale? That is, they're deciding what it's worth to them, what is fair to them, such that they'd care to part with their property.
There's a lot of items whose value tends to go down over time, or are virtually guaranteed to go on sale, and they can price-segment me to their hearts content on them if they'd just let me enter the price I'm willing to buy at. You'd think that this signal would have significant value to them. I mean, I get the counter arguments too, but it still seems like they could work some selling magic on this and win back the profit in the end.
Pieces of this are there; Subscribe and Save lets you save money if you pre-commit (sorta, it's easy to drop out of) to buying certain items, and now this "Make an Offer" option... they seem to be working their way up to this, why not go all the way...?
We welcome Amazon into this space, and are really glad to see this idea catching on.
Check out our developer docs and integration plugins[2], or feel free to ask any questions you have here.
http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-10/lessons-f...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00I053ICY/sr=8-1/qid...
You can see that it sends you to Dell's website.
Their system is simply much nicer to use and their support is great, even when buying from 3rd party merchants on their platform. There were cases where something wouldn't work (example a phone a month ago) and i was refunded first and then given several weeks to return the broken phone!
Best of all I no longer have to deal with Paypal and their whims or worry about being scammed on their Ebay site. Hell now that I think of it I have barely used paypal in the last year.
Also I can buy giftcards at 3% discount on the likes of gyft.com (10% last black friday weekend) with bitcoin. Amazon sort of indirectly accept bitcoin via their giftcards which is fantastic + discount on top. And of course the Prime programme is great with free deliveries.
I hate the way on Ebay something is listed with a low price but by time you get to checkout mysterious high delivery fees appear, that in my opionin is sneaky. Neither is their 90s interface nice or user friendly to use.
edit: wow i sound like i got brainwashed by Amazon lol! Oh well one happy customer here :)
LSC: so how much do you want to pay for that
me: $49.99, like it says right next to the item on your Site
LSC: we'll let you have it for $85 and throw in free one week shipping
me: that's unethical
LSC: okay $80 and thanks for the compliment.
me: look, $55 is all i can afford to pay, that's all i have on me, i swear--so take it or leave it.
LSC: unlikely, in fact almost impossible--let's see, your median cumulative Amazon purchases by month for the past 24 months is just under $450; plus you have a cumulative balance of $216.34 on three Amazon gift cards in your name. You must be doing pretty well, sir.
me: i'm just a programmer--overworked and underpaid, etc.
LSC: yes we know. Now let's see...according to your shipping address and zip code, you live in...downtown Palo Alto!
me: well yes, but towards the dodgy end.
LSC: no you don't. So the median household income in your neighborhood is....
me: no idea where that figure came from, anyway, you can't tell my salary based on a neighborhood average.
LSC: well technically i could...but why should i in this case when i know your exactly how much you earn.
me: you're lying
LSC: you'll regret that. how's this for lying...remember about six months ago when you, persuaded by the 10% off the total in your shopping cart we promised, you clicked on our Amazon credit card offer and filled out the application right before you checked-out--giving us access to your entire credit history...
me: oh god
LSC: tell you what, i'll let you have it for $90, you pay for the one-day shiping and sign your family up for Amazon triple prime, and we'll say good night. Deal?
me: oh god
LSC: what's the problem? you soulnd depressed.
