Most shoppers don’t think to bargain. If an item is marked at a certain price, it’s stressful to walk up to a salesperson and ask if the price can be lowered. People aren’t used to haggling, so the idea may seem embarrassing, or just too out of the ordinary to try. How often does it work? According to Getting the Best Deal: Better Bargaining, by John Przybys on ReviewJournal.com, those who bargain end up saving money 90% of the time. Not only do these people save money, “Asked for their biggest score, most said they saved $50 or more while, in the case of cell phone plans and medical fees, more than 25 percent of respondents saved at least $100.” It may seem intimidating to ask for a lower price, but really, all  sellers want is a deal that leaves them with a profit. The fact that they seem more powerful than that only helps them end up selling at higher prices. While it’s common to bargain for better prices on houses and cars, the article mentions that bargaining very often works in electronics stores, large department stores, independently owned stores, and even grocery stores. People don’t try this because they don’t realize the position of power they are in as a buyer.

Where does this power come from? In class we discussed graphs with buyers, sellers, and traders, and how prices can be affected based on who is able to trade with whom. The issue of the buyer’s actual power can be roughly approximated as that type of graph. A customer enters a store and sees a price on a piece of furniture that is slightly high. The furniture isn’t hand crafted or particularly special, and similar furniture could easily be found in other stores. The customer however, sees himself as only able to buy from the one trades he is dealing with. He is imagining a graph where many traders buy from similar sellers, but where he is in a weak position, where he can not really trade with other traders, and he must either accept the asked price or leave. However, the store’s manager realizes that when the customer turns down a price, he can easily look for similar items at another store. Once the customer realizes that he is actually in a position of power, bargaining is easy. If both the buyer and the trader get a good deal by haggling, there’s very little reason why a store owner would not want to turn down a bargainer.

While this example isn’t exactly what we’ve covered in class (bid and ask prices first, then buyers and sellers picking traders) it definitely reflects elements from this graph, and from all discussions of which nodes have more or less powerful placements on a graph. A node that is only connected to a single other node generally has less power than a node with multiple neighbors. The idea that haggling is uncommon and uncomfortable stops the buyer from realizing that he’s in a powerful position in a network.