When you go abroad with the intention of immersing yourself in the culture of the country that you are visiting, it isn’t uncommon to take a trip to a local street market. These are particularly sought-after in India where creatives and craftsman take the opportunity to sell their work to locals and tourists.
At a traditional bazaar (street market) you will find anything from clothes and souvenirs to food items and art all proudly put on display and sold at very reasonable prices.
Something else that you will find at street markets in India, and one of the reasons for their popularity, is a lot of bargaining. In fact, it is an expectation (some may even say a tradition) here seeing as there are no fixed prices attached to any of the goods on sale.
The concept of bargaining is quite simple; the buyer will attempt to negotiate the price of an item with the seller to get it an even lower cost. This is often because the buyer believes that the price listed or first offered to them is not a true representation of the value that the item holds and that, even when they get a significant mark down, the seller is still making a profit from the sale – so everyone wins.
However, is this the reality of bargaining especially when doing so with small, independent businesses such as those found on street markets in India?
When you manage to haggle down the cost of an item at a local market, you may feel as though you have received a fairer price for it, and since price tags are not usually attached to items on Indian markets, you can never be too sure what you were expected to pay for it anyway.
But there is also a chance that you really did get a bargain, and not in way that positively impacts the seller.
In many cases, it is likely that local artisans are barely breaking even each time they make a sale and, as a result, this kind of practice is not economically sustainable.
The items found at street markets may not be designer labels but the time and craftmanship is comparable yet you will never walk into a Chanel store and try to negotiate the price of one of their handbags.
Whether you have your eye on a small souvenir to take back home and display on a shelf, or a scarf that you want to gift to a loved one, the work that has gone into making the product gives it intrinsic value that cannot be found in mass-produced, store-bought duplicates. Yet no price is allocated; therefore, any price can be taken.
You could argue that the biggest issue, and the one that causes tourists to feel that bargaining is acceptable, is that buyers do not see the real value in many of these items.
When talking about local artisans who are selling handwoven textiles, homemade foods or painted ceramics, the skill and time that has gone into each item gives them greater value than is often visible to the end consumer. Not to mention the story behind each product, and the fact that they’re not mass-produced so each one is truly unique.
Without the seller communicating this information to the buyer in some way, they’re not going to understand how much the item is actually worth.
It doesn’t help that many of the stalls at these markets display their goods in such a way that they don’t look as valuable as they are either.
So, could the answer be that local creatives and artisans need to find better and more impactful ways to display their products and communicate their value to the consumers?
It would be a great place to start. If these market stall holders gave their goods an actual value with a fixed price to begin with, it would help both parties establish a fair footing to start from.
But some of the responsibility does lie with the consumers too.
Although the desire to save some money, and not feel as though they are being overcharged, is understandable, more respect needs to be shown to local sellers and their work. By doing a little bit of research and putting pride aside, the need to bargain will quickly become a thing of the past so that local sellers and spending tourists can both walk away happy.