My bargaining tactics

What is bargaining in business?

Bargaining in business simply means to negotiate price of goods and services between a buyer and a seller or between a service provider and a client which aims at reaching an agreement between the parties involved.

Are you a good bargainer? What tactics do you normally use?

What positive result is there to waste time to bargain for services you cannot provide for yourself or to beat down a price of goods and services that have gone up because taxes have been placed on it or as a result of government policies. In our country, people of the lower class bear the final brunt when prices of commodities are raised because they cannot make bulk purchase. Hence, they are forced to learn bargaining tactics.

purchasing food items in the market

Come to think of these:

• How can I bargain for the increase in electricity tariffs even when the providers does not supply it the number of hours in commensurate with the new tariffs?
• What can I do to change the prices of data/voice services if there is one major provider of such services with millions of subscribers in their network in a country?
• Will I define a service charge for a Bank or choose to stop making transactions?

For the aforementioned reasons, I am not a good bargainer because my tactics may fail when I am persuaded to buy goods and services.

Are you of the opinion that all goods should be under bargain or under a fixed price? Explain.

If goods and services in the market have a regulatory price, there will be no need for bargaining. In that case new comers in the market like myself will not be cheated. We will just enter the market or shop and pay for items we want and there we go without waste of time for bargaining.
So a fixed price of goods and services by a Masses' Mandated and Regulatory Body(MMRB) will iron this out.

Have you fallen victim of buying things higher due to not knowing how to bargain?

Once I was called by my wife to help her pick some few items for food when returning from work. I used that opportunity to stop by the local market.
As I entered, sellers were persuading, “sir come and buy from me, I will sell it better for you". I was so sure to buy from the one who even said she will sell it better because I was already tired, I needed to go back home and refresh.

I returned home with the excitement that I have remembered to help my wife picked those food items she needed . When she looked at the items I had purchased, she was happy about quality of fish, sizes of onions and other items I bought.

She started inquiring to know how much I have bought each of them. When I told her their prices, she was frowning and said “you have been cheated by the seller". Then I replied, “but you like the commodities I bought"? She was in affirmative.
To calm her, I added “next time I will do better purchasing if I am given a list of items with their price tag".

You got it right, I didn't know how to bargain because I wasn't aware of the current prices of those items purchased.
The tactics used was that I will buy from any person that persuades to sell at an affordable price. And I did.

This happened because I didn't know how to bargain better before purchasing those food stuffs.
I will encourage all men forks to try purchasing from time to time so as to be aware of current price of goods and hence improve their bargaining skills.
I am inviting the following Steemians to get to know the prices of some food items by doing window shopping and bargaining for their price these days and write back to us on this contest
They are; @bossj23, @jospha and @manuelhooks.
Thanking you @okere-blessing for organizing this mind blowing and thought provoking contest.
All pictures are Author's Owned.