
Show HN: an online shop that bargains with you - shaharsol
http://cartlassi.com/
======
iambateman
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 feel like I've lost when we agree, just because he might go a little
lower.

My guess is that this has a lot to do with instantly receiving the item in
question.

~~~
corin_
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.

~~~
shaharsol
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.

~~~
ljf
I think the risk is that: 1\. users will know the price is not correct, and
even when they 'haggle' it down, they will feel that they are in some way
being taken for a ride. 2\. users will be left wondering if they could have
paid less 3\. users that don't haggle, and find out later will become a
support cost, as they phone up to demand the price that their friend paid 4\.
users that don't haggle, but find out later, will simply feel ripped off, and
will not return. \---- I think eBay handles this quite elegantly, with the 72
hour window for a response. Often I want something ASAP, and even though I
know I can haggle, I'll pay the buy it now price rather than wait for a
response. Alternatively I'll wait for a real person to get back. Knowing that
someone is considering my offer is pleasing, as is their comments back
sometimes, explaining why they can't meet the price I suggested, which can
turn me into a customer at a slightly higher price if I like what they are
selling. Automating this too much removes the interaction, and the feeling of
achievement - if ever purchaser from a market store in Egypt knew what people
had paid before, it would feel very different.

------
DanielStraight
Got sofa. Entered price of $800, less than half the original price, then came
up to $1500.

"Why don't you make a move in my direction?"

I guess the Turing test remains to be passed.

Any kind of response like this makes it obvious the system is a lot less
intelligent than it's pretending to be, which is a huge turn-off to me.

------
chippy
I like it.

How about this:

1) based on previous spending habits of a user on the site, and/or credit
score, social media profile or a simple age, location profile, the shopkeeper
(system) knows a rough geodemographics / personality of the user.

2) First price shown is variable depending on this algorithm. Some users who
are poor will have cheaper prices. Richer ones, or users who like to spend
time haggling will have higher ones. I've no idea if this is the best strategy
- but some game theory and psychology of shopping will be used for the
algorithm, you can work that out :)

3) User is able to purchase, or haggle.

4) Different users have different floors.

5) RNG - Sometimes a user will get a product for much less than the floor.
They will feel as if their haggling got them a real bargain, because they
really did! Sometimes the retailer will not sell the product unless they are
making a larger margin than before. Retailers who use the system will feel as
if they are making a real profit, because they really will be!

~~~
drivingmenuts
Except for step three, I think you just described Amazon.com.

Amazon - I know they're fscking me, but they make it seem so _reasonable_ ,
dammit.

------
jamesk_au
An essential part of the real life bargaining experience is that you're stuck
with the attempts you make and, short of finding a new vendor, you can't try
again with a clean slate.

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.

------
pappyo
I thoroughly enjoyed my time bargaining when I visited Ecuador. I think I
would have loved it even more if I spoke Spanish :).

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.

------
Nemant
I bargained a $1,800 sofa down to $87.

My first offer was -$5,000.

Maybe your algorithm needs to work on negative numbers.

~~~
Nemant
Okay I just tried again and it doesn't work :-/

~~~
31cup
I won all mine for $.01 by skipping the bid and just hitting buy it for a
penny. Algorithm definitely needs work, heh.

------
drivingmenuts
At some point, your demo asked me to think of your children, which seems to
fall into a cultural stereotype.

On the internet, no one knows your a dog.

Or cares, really.

The larger point is: you invited me to think of your children, without giving
a compelling reason why I should even care.

This is the internet - it's depersonalizing, anonymizing, delocalizing, and
dehumanizing. Pretty much the antithesis of everything related to traditional
haggling.

So, tell me again: who are these children, what do they look like, how old are
they? If they're old enough to work, why aren't they, etc. If they're not
cute, by _my_ cultural standards which you have only a small chance of
guessing, then what's up with that?

It's much easier to either drive a customer away or raise non-germane
questions during a depersonalized haggling event. It's also way to easy to
have those questions begin driving the conversation in the customer's mind.

Note: I'm from a culture where haggling over price is not the norm and I'm not
a fan of it. YMMV where you are.

------
onion2k
A clever idea on paper, but in practice I can't help but think users would
wonder whether or not they got the lowest possible price, and consequently
would abandon their shopping carts if they felt they hadn't. As a result,
you'd see a lot fewer conversions. Obviously that's something that would need
extensive testing though.

~~~
shaharsol
Considering the % of abandoned shopping carts these days, I doubt if there's
any lower place to go :) however of course you have a point. This things needs
testing.

------
samnardoni
I would never buy anything from an online stored that used this.

------
higherpurpose
I would just input the lowest number until it stops lowering the number, so I
get the lowest price.

Suggestion to fix this: either slow the site needs to bargain 10+ times, so
people get "bored" with trying to bargain for the lowest price (while still
not seeming like a "bargaining gimmick" too much) or say you lower it 3 times
in a row, but if I try the 4th time, it raises the price again, and maybe put
a snarky message like "I see you're trying to bleed us dry, so let's start
over" or whatever. But do these raises in a pretty random way. I figure this
would have the effect of having people not want to try to bargain too many
times to get the lower price, because they would be forced into "starting
over". So they might just agree with the 2nd or 3rd bargain.

------
ashdav
Minor bug, if i type in a number and click 'add to cart' it says I won it for
that number.

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

------
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.

------
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.

~~~
shaharsol
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)

------
impassebreaker
Interesting. A couple of observations, from grappling with some of the same
issues for our negotiation site.

Definitely agree that you wouldn't want to share the seller's bottom line in
the event of a match. This would lead to built-in buyer's remorse. I gather
this may have been for initial proof of concept, not long-term functionality.
But you also need to think about the impact of masking the algorithm (see
below) so it can't be reverse engineered (on the flip-side) and consider what
information can and should be given about the process.

Agree with one of the comments below that slowing down the result may make for
better user experience. This was (surprising) feedback we received for
impassebreaker.com -- people felt "let down" when the match was revealed too
fast. There's a game component here, and a big splash may be important. Then
again, it does seem a bit deceptive to show a progress bar when the result is
already calculated.

Subjective observation, but based on a decent amount of feedback. Users need
to trust that the process is fair. Trust is hard. If you place the bottom line
in context -- e.g., show your user what the comparative price is on other
sites -- would that context make the bargaining process smoother and build
more trust? Might it also make the site stickier? If your provide the
comparison shopping data, then people won't need to leave the site to do
comparison shopping. That may or may not make you more appealing to sellers,
so perhaps it's not on point. As it stands, the process seems arbitrary -- I
totally understand that this is an early sketch, but if/as you build it, I'd
keep this in mind. I can't remember the cites, but I believe there's some
research out there that suggests that people are more inclined to trust
computers in a negotiation than other people. So you have a potential
advantage if you make the playing field seem a bit more level. At the end of
the day, what you may be building is a trust machine. Maybe it's different,
but that's how I've thought of our platform.

Negotiation style is culture and language dependent. The verbal dynamic that
works in the Suk won't necessarily work in Omaha. One isn't better than the
other, of course. But if the goal is closing sales, you need to keep context
and language in mind, and at a very granular level. Words and how they are
presented are key. Maybe that's part of what the system learns.

Best of luck. There's some potential here, long term, for something very cool.
I'll be interested to see where you take this.

~~~
shaharsol
That url you gave is broken. a typo? Curious to see it...

~~~
impassebreaker
[https://www.impassebreaker.com](https://www.impassebreaker.com). If you click
on the "about us" button on the front page you'll find links to some reading
(in the answers) that you may find interesting. Feel free to email me off-line
with any other questions -- stephen at impassebreaker dot com.

~~~
shaharsol
Nice!

------
kubiiii
Great idea, dissapointing proof of concept. There are many things to do to
work out a bargaining algorithm.

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.

~~~
QuasiAlon
I think merely seeing the haggle option would make the user understand it's
just a suggested price nobody ever pays

------
alandarev
Nicely looking site, and fresh idea, though...

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.

------
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.

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

------
ultrafez
Just so you know, your homepage's responsiveness doesn't work perfectly at all
screen sizes. This is what it looked like for me running Chrome 33 on Ubuntu
13.04 [http://i.imgur.com/DzXDUm6.png](http://i.imgur.com/DzXDUm6.png)

------
tomd3v
To get the lowest price:

setInterval(function() { $("#price").val(0); $("#bid-button").click(); },
100);

:)

I like the idea by the way.

------
hoopism
If it was real-time and included other shoppers and the threat of not
accepting meant the threat of loss... then maybe you have something.

Otherwise the artificiality of bargaining when the bottom is effectively
predetermined seems like a waste of typing.

------
joosters
Why does it let you lower your offer? e.g. 1st offer is $300, and my 2nd offer
is $200. Yet at each stage, the website lowers its price.

The algorithm shouldn't be dropping the price and the bidding process
shouldn't let you drop your offers.

~~~
QuasiAlon
right now the algorithm allows negative prices too :)

------
boonez123
I've created a platform which allows for price depreciation over time. See
example here:
[http://cyclingdemo.efreeme.com/items/569](http://cyclingdemo.efreeme.com/items/569)

~~~
QuasiAlon
What's in it for the seller ? :) Buyers will always wait on, no?

------
JadoJodo
Interesting idea, but as others have noted, once it's known the game is
rigged, it's just a matter of time before I find the price floor. Perhaps a
random price floor for each shopper?

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

~~~
shaharsol
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.

------
SimpleXYZ
I think if you make an offer too low it should get insulted and not sell it to
you at all.

------
mattholtom
Who needs to write code to get the lowest price? The floors are in the JS
source.

~~~
shaharsol
Guys! This is just a demo to show off then algorithm. Of course a real shop
won't embed the config in the js!

------
dewey
Looks like it doesn't like our way of writing numbers.

0,01 - "You got it for $NaN"

------
menriquez
dumb...pointless...the obvious strategy is just offer $1 until you reach the
price floor.

~~~
lucb1e
> 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.

~~~
menriquez
> Because I totally would remember this and am much more likely to return at a
> later time.

i would totally remember what a waste of my time it was, so yes in that sense
you are right.

