Will the days of haggling return in the 2020s?

You walk into a grocery store shopping for things to cook while being frugal with your expenses. Some products for sale are set to expire within the next few days, yet you know that these are not discounted and remain at full price. The products are just the kind of ingredients you need to buy for your next cooked meal, but you abstain from selecting them and continue to search for cheaper products.

Instead of passing up the expiring products, what if you could haggle to bring the prices down? Since the expiration date is set to the next few days, the price could be dropped significantly to avoid the full price of a similar product. Even though this sounds like a great idea, realistically, the grocery store is going to have you pay full price anyway.

Many countries have adopted the open market policy; allowing buyers and sellers to trade by competition to determine the price of a product. However, these competitive struggles are only really practiced in business-to-business commerce, while customers of a grocery store have only one choice. Pay for a product based on the price shown.

Is that what you would consider to be an “open market”: buying a product that you see in a grocery store or shopping mall is what you pay? The only things that you can promptly haggle for nowadays are a car, house, job, or rent according to the Corporate Finance Team.

Those types of expenses are rather high-priced amenities that offer long-term benefits, not immediate daily necessities. For small amenities, haggling is socially unacceptable because customers have a tendency to be rather ruthless or companies take advantage of customers. To mitigate haggling, a “non-haggle” rule was formed by commercial businesses. According to Timothy B. Lee from Forbes Media:

“… in many wealthy countries, the retail sector has developed a no-haggling norm. When I go into Target, I don’t argue with the cashier about the price of each item. There’s a posted, official price for each item and that’s what most people pay.”

The sticker prices posted on products are great for peace of mind and provide comfort in knowing others are paying the same price. However, should this be the case for every product while shopping? As mentioned earlier, an expiring product is equal to a non-expiring product of similar origin. What are the benefits of buying an expiring product at full price?

To some degree, consumers themselves need to haggle. While there are websites like Craigslist and eBay that exist to sell merchandise consumer-to-consumer, there is not a definitive method for a consumer to haggle without embarrassing themselves toward commercial businesses. Consumers are slowly being taken advantage of in our so-called “open market” while shopping at commercial businesses.

We see this yearly with typical food prices escalating into steep zones. Consumers themselves have to abide by these set prices; never gaining a true understanding of why a product is priced that much. This extends even further by pointing out that consumers have lost their haggling skills altogether. They are mindlessly buying products because commercial businesses set prices without distributing the details.

Have you ever thought: why is a jar of grape jelly half an hour’s wage instead of a quarter of an hour? Another great example is from the movie Father of the Bride where George Banks complains about his problem with hot dog buns presented by Bits and Pieces of Nostalgia from YouTube. The scene itself is a comical act of passive aggressiveness towards commercial businesses. However, in the truest aspect, the ridiculousness of priced products comes forth from the scripted scene in a realistic sense.

Even if haggling remains sociably unacceptable, learning to haggle is still an option as a self-taught skill. Whether we will see the days of haggling return or not depends on how the economy changes. One thing is for certain, you can now start thinking about why a product is priced like George Banks.