Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: an online shop that bargains with you

cartlassi.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 52 posts

Re: Show HN: an online shop that bargains with you

#11

Post by corin_ »

iambateman wrote: post #9

Another commenter posted some JavaScript that runs to find the price floor. Wouldn't a system like this be subject to virtually everyone finding the lowest price almost immediately? Because I intuitively understand that there is a fixed price floor, it just feels wrong. What's weird is that I don't get this feeling when I'm bargaining with someone in person. Even if we're trying to find an agreeable price, I don't fe…

I think it's the fact that you know the price floor is pre-meditated. When you negotiate with someone you feel like you are both compromising, whereas in this case you know they've already decided what their fair price is, and are hoping you don't push hard enough to achieve it. Which may sometimes be the case in real negotiations, but they put a human face on it which makes it more friendly.

Re: Show HN: an online shop that bargains with you

#12

Post by NikhilVerma »

The site assumes bargaining is anything but a social act. If you are going to bargain with a computer you will always enter 0 as the price you are willing to pay and see where the algorithm takes you.

In real life you wouldn't insult the seller by asking for 0$ but have to employ more social tactics to get a good price.

Re: Show HN: an online shop that bargains with you

#15

Post by FailMore »

NikhilVerma wrote: post #12

The site assumes bargaining is anything but a social act. If you are going to bargain with a computer you will always enter 0 as the price you are willing to pay and see where the algorithm takes you. In real life you wouldn't insult the seller by asking for 0$ but have to employ more social tactics to get a good price.

Very much my experience. I quickly found myself inputting $5 and hitting bargain again and again until I got to the base price.

Re: Show HN: an online shop that bargains with you

#16

Post by jblok »

This is a great idea but I don't think it could work. My immediate tactic was to put in 10 dollars each time until I saw the price dropping barely any lower. It wouldn't take a non-technical person long to realise this aswell, so in practice, shops would probably just raise prices accordingly, and look uncompetitive if people compared the unnegoriated price.

The difference with in person bartering is that you're dealing with a real person, who can walk away from a deal, and who has actualy emotions and needs. I don't care if I offend this computer with my ridiculous offers and I don't see the market stall owner with children to feed.

Re: Show HN: an online shop that bargains with you

#17

Post by shaharsol »

pawelkomarnicki wrote: post #14

WTF? "You got it for $25.00 Initial bid was $100.00. Shop wouldn't have sold for less than $75"

To be honest I really didn't spend much time debugging the add-to-cart button for this demo. I hope ppl understand that and focus on the bargain experience.

Re: Show HN: an online shop that bargains with you

#18

Post by drivingmenuts »

My questions is:

1. Is that the lowest price you have?

2. Is there a cheaper price elsewhere? (Google search to verify)

3. Yes? See ya ...

4. No? I'll think about it.

Step 3 is a huge problem. First off, haggling requires a degree of exclusivity, either a) real: you're the only selling it, or b) imagined: you make someone believe you're the only one selling it.

If 3a is the case, awesome.

If 3b is the case, you can easily be caught lying to the customer, never a good place to be in. There are acceptable lies (called marketing) and unacceptable lies (pretty much everything else).

You don't want to get caught in the everything else.

It's an interesting idea (I can see a couple of use cases for it), but otherwise, I'd avoid haggling prices on the web.

Re: Show HN: an online shop that bargains with you

#19

Post by shaharsol »

corin_ wrote: post #11
iambateman wrote: post #9

Another commenter posted some JavaScript that runs to find the price floor. Wouldn't a system like this be subject to virtually everyone finding the lowest price almost immediately? Because I intuitively understand that there is a fixed price floor, it just feels wrong. What's weird is that I don't get this feeling when I'm bargaining with someone in person. Even if we're trying to find an agreeable price, I don't fe…

I think it's the fact that you know the price floor is pre-meditated. When you negotiate with someone you feel like you are both compromising, whereas in this case you know they've already decided what their fair price is, and are hoping you don't push hard enough to achieve it. Which may sometimes be the case in real negotiations, but they put a human face on it which makes it more friendly.

If you play with it enough, you'll see that it won't go down to the minimum in all cases. The algorithm will insist on what it analyzes the user will pay, and will prefer to lose the sale on account of saving its credibility for the long run.

Also, this is just the beginning. It will get much wiser as we go.

Re: Show HN: an online shop that bargains with you

#20

Post by shaharsol »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #18

My questions is: 1. Is that the lowest price you have? 2. Is there a cheaper price elsewhere? (Google search to verify) 3. Yes? See ya ... 4. No? I'll think about it. Step 3 is a huge problem. First off, haggling requires a degree of exclusivity, either a) real: you're the only selling it, or b) imagined: you make someone believe you're the only one selling it. If 3a is the case, awesome. If 3b is the case, you can e…

This algorithm is more relevant to shops where the products on sale aren't that widely distributed all over. It's more for the Shopify, BigCommerce etc speciality shops. It will never compete with Amazon (as long as amazon works on fixed prices)
Post reply on HN