IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bge/wpaper/1032.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bargaining at Retail Stores: Evidence from Vienna

Author

Listed:
  • Sandro Shelegia
  • Joshua Sherman

Abstract

The optimality of trading mechanisms has long been a subject of interest in economics, yet there exists little empirical evidence regarding which mechanisms of trade are deployed in practice. Our audit study of retail stores in Vienna documents previously unknown and important facts. Stores agree to a discount off of the posted price approximately 40% of the time. Discounts are more likely to be granted by small-scale firms, for higher-priced products, and for non-sale items. Our findings are consistent with the predictions of a principle-agent model in which a firm decides whether to augment posted prices with bargaining concessions.

Suggested Citation

  • Sandro Shelegia & Joshua Sherman, 2018. "Bargaining at Retail Stores: Evidence from Vienna," Working Papers 1032, Barcelona School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bge:wpaper:1032
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.barcelonagse.eu/sites/default/files/working_paper_pdfs/1032.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Oliver E. Williamson, 1967. "Hierarchical Control and Optimum Firm Size," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 75, pages 123-123.
    2. Calvo, Guillermo A & Wellisz, Stanislaw, 1978. "Supervision, Loss of Control, and the Optimum Size of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(5), pages 943-952, October.
    3. Jan De Loecker & Frederic Warzynski, 2012. "Markups and Firm-Level Export Status," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2437-2471, October.
    4. Wang, Ruqu, 1995. "Bargaining versus posted-price selling," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(9), pages 1747-1764, December.
    5. James J. Heckman, 1976. "The Common Structure of Statistical Models of Truncation, Sample Selection and Limited Dependent Variables and a Simple Estimator for Such Models," NBER Chapters, in: Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, Volume 5, number 4, pages 475-492, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Xin Wang & Alan Montgomery & Kannan Srinivasan, 2008. "When auction meets fixed price: a theoretical and empirical examination of buy-it-now auctions," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 339-370, December.
    7. John A. List, 2004. "The Nature and Extent of Discrimination in the Marketplace: Evidence from the Field," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 49-89.
    8. Matthew Backus & Thomas Blake & Steven Tadelis, 2019. "On the Empirical Content of Cheap-Talk Signaling: An Application to Bargaining," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(4), pages 1599-1628.
    9. Nooteboom, Bart, 1982. "A new theory of retailing costs," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 163-186.
    10. Ayres, Ian & Siegelman, Peter, 1995. "Race and Gender Discrimination in Bargaining for a New Car," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 304-321, June.
    11. Goldberg, Pinelopi Koujianou, 1996. "Dealer Price Discrimination in New Car Purchases: Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(3), pages 622-654, June.
    12. Asaf Zussman, 2013. "Ethnic Discrimination: Lessons from the Israeli Online Market for Used Cars," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 123(11), pages 433-468, November.
    13. David Gill & John Thanassoulis, 2016. "Competition in Posted Prices with Stochastic Discounts," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(594), pages 1528-1570, August.
    14. John Riley & Richard Zeckhauser, 1983. "Optimal Selling Strategies: When to Haggle, When to Hold Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(2), pages 267-289.
    15. Gabriele Camera & Alain Delacroix, 2004. "Trade Mechanism Selection in Markets with Frictions," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 7(4), pages 851-868, October.
    16. Castillo, Marco & Petrie, Ragan & Torero, Maximo & Vesterlund, Lise, 2013. "Gender differences in bargaining outcomes: A field experiment on discrimination," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 35-48.
    17. Arnold, Michael A & Lippman, Steven A, 1998. "Posted Prices versus Bargaining in Markets with Asymmetric Information," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 36(3), pages 450-457, July.
    18. P. A. Riach & J. Rich, 2002. "Field Experiments of Discrimination in the Market Place," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(483), pages 480-518, November.
    19. Berry, Steven & Levinsohn, James & Pakes, Ariel, 1995. "Automobile Prices in Market Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(4), pages 841-890, July.
    20. Fiona Scott Morton & Jorge Silva-Risso & Florian Zettelmeyer, 2011. "What matters in a price negotiation: Evidence from the U.S. auto retailing industry," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 9(4), pages 365-402, December.
    21. Jeffrey M Wooldridge, 2010. "Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 0262232588, December.
    22. Vuong, Quang H, 1989. "Likelihood Ratio Tests for Model Selection and Non-nested Hypotheses," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 307-333, March.
    23. Susan Athey & Jonathan Levin & Enrique Seira, 2011. "Comparing open and Sealed Bid Auctions: Evidence from Timber Auctions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(1), pages 207-257.
    24. Bradley J Larsen, 2021. "The Efficiency of Real-World Bargaining: Evidence from Wholesale Used-Auto Auctions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(2), pages 851-882.
    25. Gill, David & Thanassoulis, John, 2009. "The impact of bargaining on markets with price takers: Too many bargainers spoil the broth," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(6), pages 658-674, August.
    26. Matthew Backus & Thomas Blakee & Brad Larsen & Steven Tadelis, 2020. "Sequential Bargaining in the Field: Evidence from Millions of Online Bargaining Interactions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(3), pages 1319-1361.
    27. Liran Einav & Chiara Farronato & Jonathan D. Levin & Neel Sundaresan, 2013. "Sales Mechanisms in Online Markets: What Happened to Internet Auctions?," NBER Working Papers 19021, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    28. Cragg, John G, 1971. "Some Statistical Models for Limited Dependent Variables with Application to the Demand for Durable Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 39(5), pages 829-844, September.
    29. Bengtsson, Niklas, 2015. "Efficient informal trade: Theory and experimental evidence from the Cape Town taxi market," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 85-98.
    30. James J. Heckman, 1976. "Introduction to "Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, Volume 5, number 4"," NBER Chapters, in: Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, Volume 5, number 4, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    31. Bester, Helmut, 1993. "Bargaining versus Price Competition in Markets with Quality Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 278-288, March.
    32. Lewis, Tracy R & Sappington, David E M, 1994. "Supplying Information to Facilitate Price Discrimination," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 35(2), pages 309-327, May.
    33. Bauner, Christoph, 2015. "Mechanism choice and the buy-it-now auction: A structural model of competing buyers and sellers," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 19-31.
    34. Perry, Motty, 1986. "An Example of Price Formation in Bilateral Situations: A Bargaining Model with Incomplete Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(2), pages 313-321, March.
    35. Hammond, Robert G., 2010. "Comparing revenue from auctions and posted prices," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 1-9, January.
    36. Preyas S. Desai & Devavrat Purohit, 2004. "“Let Me Talk to My Manager”: Haggling in a Competitive Environment," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(2), pages 219-233, August.
    37. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    38. Desmond (Ho-Fu) Lo & Wouter Dessein & Mrinal Ghosh & Francine Lafontaine, 2016. "Price Delegation and Performance Pay: Evidence from Industrial Sales Forces," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 32(3), pages 508-544.
    39. Kwoka, John E, Jr, 1979. "The Effect of Market Share Distribution on Industry Performance," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 61(1), pages 101-109, February.
    40. Raskovich, Alexander, 2007. "Competition or collusion? Negotiating discounts off posted prices," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 341-354, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Donaldson, Jason Roderick & Piacentino, Giorgia, 2022. "Money runs," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 35-57.
    2. Pranav Jindal & Peter Newberry, 2022. "The Profitability of Revenue-Based Quotas Under Price Negotiation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(2), pages 917-940, February.
    3. Xu Zhang & Puneet Manchanda & Junhong Chu, 2021. "“Meet Me Halfway”: The Costs and Benefits of Bargaining," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(6), pages 1081-1105, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Xu Zhang & Puneet Manchanda & Junhong Chu, 2021. "“Meet Me Halfway”: The Costs and Benefits of Bargaining," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(6), pages 1081-1105, November.
    2. Sandro Shelegia & Joshua Sherman, 2014. "When the Price You See Is Not the Price You Get: A Bargaining Study," Vienna Economics Papers 1410, University of Vienna, Department of Economics.
    3. Jason Allen & Robert Clark & Jean-François Houde, 2019. "Search Frictions and Market Power in Negotiated-Price Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(4), pages 1550-1598.
    4. Zeng, Xiaohua & Dasgupta, Srabana & Weinberg, Charles B., 2016. "The competitive implications of a “no-haggle” pricing strategy when others negotiate: Findings from a natural experiment," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 907-923.
    5. Sandro Shelegia & Joshua Sherman, 2014. "When the Price You See Is Not the Price You Get: A Bargaining Study," Vienna Economics Papers vie1410, University of Vienna, Department of Economics.
    6. John Thanassoulis & David Gill, 2010. "The Optimal Marketing Mix of Posted Prices, Discounts and Bargaining," Economics Series Working Papers 479, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    7. Xavier D’Haultfœuille & Isis Durrmeyer & Philippe Février, 2019. "Automobile Prices in Market Equilibrium with Unobserved Price Discrimination," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(5), pages 1973-1998.
    8. Guofang Huang, 2020. "When to haggle, when to hold firm? Lessons from the used‐car retail market," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 579-604, July.
    9. Ambarish Chandra & Sumeet Gulati & James M. Sallee, 2017. "Who Loses when Prices are Negotiated? An Analysis of the New Car Market," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(2), pages 235-274, June.
    10. Cardella, Eric & Seiler, Michael J., 2016. "The effect of listing price strategy on real estate negotiations: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 71-90.
    11. Gill, David & Thanassoulis, John, 2009. "The impact of bargaining on markets with price takers: Too many bargainers spoil the broth," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(6), pages 658-674, August.
    12. Qi Feng & Yuanchen Li & J. George Shanthikumar, 2020. "Competitive Revenue Management with Sequential Bargaining," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(5), pages 1307-1324, May.
    13. Selcuk, Cemil & Gokpinar, Bilal, 2017. "Fixed vs. Flexible Pricing in a Competitive Market," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2017/9, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section.
    14. Kondo, M., 2018. "Schooling and Within-Sector Labor Productivity Outcome in Uganda: Joint Estimation of Returns to Education and Labor Supply," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277473, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    15. Kong‐Pin Chen & Szu‐Hsien Ho & Chi‐Hsiang Liu & Chien‐Ming Wang, 2017. "The Optimal Listing Strategies In Online Auctions," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 58(2), pages 421-437, May.
    16. Preyas S. Desai & Devavrat Purohit, 2004. "“Let Me Talk to My Manager”: Haggling in a Competitive Environment," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(2), pages 219-233, August.
    17. Liang Guo, 2023. "Gathering Information Before Negotiation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(1), pages 200-219, January.
    18. Kuo, Chia-Wei & Huang, Kwei-Long, 2012. "Dynamic pricing of limited inventories for multi-generation products," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 217(2), pages 394-403.
    19. Cemil Selcuk & Bilal Gokpinar, 2018. "Fixed vs. Flexible Pricing in a Competitive Market," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(12), pages 5584-5598, December.
    20. Lee, Jungmin & Park, Sangkon, 2019. "Price discrimination by language: Field experimental evidence from a shopping mall," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 69-98.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    bargaining; posted price; trading mechanism; audit study;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L81 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Retail and Wholesale Trade; e-Commerce
    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bge:wpaper:1032. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bruno Guallar (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bargses.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.