Amazon wants to bring out the haggler in its customers. Yesterday, the company announced a new program called "Make an Offer" that allows customers to negotiate with sellers on more than 150,000 items sold in its marketplace.
Currently, the program covers items sold in sports and entertainment collectibles, collectible coins and fine arts. Next year, Amazon said the feature will be expanded to hundreds of thousands of items.
According to Amazon, sellers who want to give customers the ability to negotiate will enable the "Make an Offer" feature. When selecting a product, the customer can enter and submit a price to the seller. The seller will receive the customer's offer via e-mail and decide to accept, reject or counter the offer. The two parties will continue to negotiate through e-mail until a deal is made or abandoned. Once an offer is accepted, the customer can enter the agreed upon price and compete their purchase.
Amazon has pointed out that it is not engaged in an auction. All items are negotiated on a one-to-one basis.
"In a recent survey of our sellers, nearly half of the respondents told us that the ability to negotiate prices with customers would be important to drive more sales on Amazon. 'Make an Offer' delivers that functionality and makes customers feel confident they are getting an item they want at the lowest price possible," said Peter Faricy, VP for Amazon Marketplace, in a statement.
"The negotiation experience will hopefully get more communication between us and our customers to help us better gauge the price for certain items," said Steven Costello, executive vice president of Steiner Sports Memorabilia. "We love the 'Make and Offer' program, and it is only going to get bigger. Once customers know this is an available feature more offers will come, leading to more sales."
While Amazon has created the program for sellers in its marketplace, there is no indication that it plans to offer the same feature on the products it sells directly to consumers.