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The idea does not make any sense in my head. There is actually some research happening in negotiating AI, but they all focus around as a training material. It seems pointless to trade with a computer. As pointed out by others, negotiating is not one sided "drop price", but justifying price drops or offering/receiving something in return.
I am deeply sorry for giving this negative feedback.
0,01 - "You got it for $NaN"
However I have a few qualms with this.
1. Most shoppers on the internet are using the internet for three reasons; (A) they are looking for the lowest price possible, (B) they are minimizing their shopping time, or (C) they are looking for something they can't find locally at a brick and mortar. If I were an (A) or (B) shopper, this is a huge turn-off to me. It is neither explicitly giving me the lowest price possible nor is it time efficient.
It might work with the (C) shoppers but that that would require some testing. Do you think a Fab.com or Etsy retailers would use this? [Not being snaky, an actual question]
2. The emotion of bargaining does not translate with e-commerce. To me, e-commerce has always been an emotionless experience.
Whenever I was buying something in Ecuador there was a certain rush I got when I locked horns with a merchant. We developed a certain bond when we finally came to an agreement and each party has thought they had won. That rush is missing here (for me anyway). I'd be curious to hear how merchants feel who normally do business this way.
How do you propose to deal with users who (eg) open multiple incognito windows in Chrome? Or will users need accounts and need to be logged in even to have a go? It seems like users will naturally want to game the system.
I felt the experience was cheapened by the fact that the 'bargain' button made it obvious that the starting price was very inflated. That is not always apparent to customers browsing in a store, and perception counts.
Who needs to write code to get the lowest price? The floors are in the JS source.
dumb...pointless...the obvious strategy is just offer $1 until you reach the price floor.
Fair enough, but...
> dumb...pointless...
Really? Did you read the question "how likely are you to remember this shop?" below the experiment? Because I totally would remember this and am much more likely to return at a later time.
What is the price of a similar item in other online stores? What does the potential customer finds appealing in the deal? Is it the first time the user tries to bargain for the same or similar item? Are there other items of interest (that the user browsed) we could throw in the bargain to make the user buy at the listed price? Or redirecting the user to a feature enhanced item for the same price.
Offering a lower price as soon as the user starts bargaining might also make him think that listed prices are not real prices.
