Q1.
Can you think of a type of market where negotiation is less common and why?
Answer
Yes — several. The clearest is the online market, and after it any market where the price is printed, regulated or fixed by a machine.
| Market | Why bargaining almost never happens there |
|---|---|
| Online shopping apps and websites | The buyer and the seller never meet. The aggregator's software shows one price to lakhs of buyers at once; there is no person on the other side to argue with. |
| Malls, supermarkets and branded stores | Goods carry a printed MRP and are billed at a counter. The salesperson has no authority to change the price, and the same price must apply to every customer. |
| Medicines and other price-controlled goods | The government fixes an upper limit for life-saving drugs. The chemist may not charge more, and has little room to charge less. |
| Petrol pumps, railway and bus tickets, cinema tickets | The price is set centrally and the same for everyone; the seller is not the price-setter. |
| Sale of wheat, paddy or maize at the government's minimum price | The whole point of a minimum support price is that it is not negotiable downwards — that is what protects the farmer. |
Bargaining survives in exactly the opposite conditions — a haat, a vegetable cart, a fish market, a bazaar for cloth or jewellery — where each seller sets his own price, no two lots of goods are identical, and buyer and seller stand face to face.
Why it happens: bargaining is possible only when one seller can charge two buyers differently. The moment a price has to be the same for everyone — because it is printed, regulated, or shown on a screen — there is nothing left to bargain about.