Do You Haggle?

Many years ago my sister and I spent two summer weeks at our grandparents' home in Brooklyn, N.Y. Nearly every memory of that brief vacation is golden – from the trip to Radio City Music Hall to Grandma's homemade pizza to the fireworks we watched from what Grandpa called the stoop.

One thing I vividly recall not enjoying, however, was the way my grandmother would haggle on price for just about everything she bought. She'd put a scowl on her face and, in her Italian accent, would say something like: You must be kiddin' me; you gotta do better than that. Every time it happened I hoped the ground would open up and swallow me whole. I thought it was the most embarrassing thing in the world.

Today, Grandma is 101 years old and still giving storekeepers dirty looks. Now, of course, I'm amused by it, but if I've inherited the haggle gene, it's either latent or I've managed to suppress it.

As it turns out, today's economy is ushering in a new generation of hagglers. There was a story in The New York Times earlier this year that linked the recent revival of haggling to savvy, wired consumers wielding research in the quest for better prices on everything from electronics and patio furniture to apparel and groceries. Egged on by the recession, customers are newly empowered to ask retailers: Can you do better on the price? And retailers, cognizant of the tough times shoppers are facing (and their aging inventories), are more willing to negotiate than they've been in the recent past.

According to the American Pulse survey conducted in April by BIGresearch, 45 percent of more than 4,000 adults polled claim to haggle for a better price on products other than a car or a house. The group most likely to haggle are those in the 35- to 54-year-old age range; least likely to dicker on price are the 55-and-older crowd (unless, of course, they're over 100 – then all bets are off.)

Digging a little deeper into the data yields some interesting tidbits. Among all those who haggle, the products they claim to have negotiated on are, in order, electronics, tires/batteries/auto repair and food/groceries. When you zoom in on 18-to-34 year olds, however, it's clear that they are more likely to have haggled over items in eight of the 12 product categories. Nineteen percent of the Gen X and Gen Y crowd have haggled over electronics (compared with 15 percent of all shoppers); 10 percent have dickered on price for beauty care/cosmetics (vs. 6 percent); 13 percent say they've haggled over a pair of shoes (vs. 9 percent).

I still can't bring myself to do it. Yet judging from the comments my 16- and 18-year-old kids make when we're out shopping, haggling will be part of doing business long after the recession abates. Their great-grandmother will be so proud.