What is it about?

Haggling for price is central to the buying behavior of consumers in countries like India, China and the middle east. We show that more than economic benefits, a haggling-prone customer is attracted to bargaining because the process of haggling is fun!

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Why is it important?

Bargaining literature is sparse in marketing. Primarily because bargaining is not so prevalent in the western world. Our work provides important insights to managers and researchers into this important and almost omnipresent phenomenon that characterizes the eastern markets. We demonstrate how a deal-prone consumer is different from a bargaining-prone consumers based on certain important psychographic attributes like value consciousness, price mavenism, distinctiveness orientation and play orientation.

Perspectives

By undertaking this research, we hope to turn the focus of academicians from around the world on understanding a few fundamental differences between a western and an eastern shopper. While the behavior of a western consumer is often studied, a consumer of emerging markets like India is not. Cultural and contextual differences shape up the Indian consumer's behavior in a very different fashion. Haggling, for instance is one such behavior unique to an Indian consumer. While several Indians engage in a process of bargaining for the sheer love of it, there are others who hate it and engage in it purely out of compulsion. Either ways, it is a phenomenon characteristic of a sizable population of the world (1 of 6 people in the world is an Indian!) and needs to be studied extensively.

Dr Jagrook Dawra
Indian Institute of Management Raipur

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: “Can you do something about the price?” – Exploring the Indian deal and bargaining-prone customer, Journal of Consumer Marketing, August 2015, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/jcm-09-2014-1158.
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