The Business Case

The business case for adoption of Haggle falls into supply-side (merchant) benefit and buy-side (consumer) benefit. 

The consumer benefits are very tangible – lower/lowest prices, greater choice of supplier, impersonal negotiation plus the benefits of using either a mobile phone, PDA or navigation device (if not web) interface for convenience.  Trends in device use, the development of purse and wallet functionality and convenience purchasing trends all point to compelling demand for such devices at the heart of the personal buying experience.  Haggle is a killer application in this domain.

For suppliers, the business case is a little harder to visualise.  For this reason, we foresee the need for a segmentation of Haggle merchants as content only, full or partial haggle merchants.  Such segmentation allows different types of Merchants to identify more easily their own angle on what separate Haggle platforms are available.

1. Content Only Merchants, Locations and Events.

Merchants may be acquired for the Haggle system to promote simple content to consumers. 

For example, a consumer may access digital content which is deeper than available signposting information - e.g. for points of interest in tourist locations or scheduled events within cities, a haggle user may interrogate and read background information relevent to landmarks including its history, design notes or even opening/closing times.  Visitors may also take advantage of navigating to these locations whilst on the move, with interactive maps and turn-by-turn navigation steps in order to get to the location of their choice.

 

2. Open Inventory Haggle Merchants

Aquired Haggle Merchants where inventory is simply offered – any take up of this offer would be processed as a separate transaction.  Open Inventory provides the simplest format of interaction between the user and the Haggle Merchant and is most attractive for merchants;

1. who particularly want to leverage new channel/new customer profile opportunities. 
   
   
2. who may have perishable/time-based (distressed) inventory – e.g. hotel rooms or hire-car availability where price-discounting toward the expiry of the inventory may both reduce the risk in lost revenue and/or where price discounting is a strong tool in generating additional sales

Open inventory Haggle merchants may come from a wide range of product/service class – the application even has relevance in alternative healthcare where a prospective patient may Haggle for an appointment.  In this context, the business case for the merchant is just the same – avoiding delinquency of inventory where costs of aborted appointments are high in addition to lost income costs.  The final output for open inventory haggle merchants is the production of a unique booking reference (or voucher) on the user device and there is traceability to the sale by the Merchant.

 

3. Closed Loop Haggle Merchants

Closed-loop Haggle Merchants will require real-time reverse feed from the Haggle booking platform back to their inventory/stock control systems in order to control (reduce by 1 Haggle sale) real-time inventory.  Although not mandatory, Closed Loop Haggle merchants would normally integrate their closed loop-inventory systems with real-time funds-transfer processing systems – i.e. to take financial value at a point of sale.  The Haggle platform will integrate with these systems – possibly POS devices or even purse technologies. 

A key advantage for a Closed-Loop Haggle Merchant is that pricing may be truly demand based and that the Haggle platform can premium price those products and services where demand is seen to be high in a real-time monitoring environment.  At a simple level, flags within the Haggle platform can simply increment when inventory is sold and a simple ‘add-£5-to-price’ mechanism can be implemented.  At a complex level, inventory which is known to be moving ‘faster-than-normal’ could be flagged for completely separate negotiation strategies which provide merchants increasing or tailing-off price revenue for each incremental sales unit processed through Haggle. 

Ultimately, this may see whole cities becoming expensive at busy times where otherwise normal or discounted prices would be the norm.

 

Irrespective of configuration option, the Haggle platform offers merchants a completely new channel to engage both new and existing customers (who may channel switch).  Haggle offers a natural fit to the established trends of low-cost operators in competitive environments – at the same time, offering convenience for the customer.  In intermediary businesses, Haggle offers a compelling business case for device manufacturers, telco/networks as well as partners for co-branding propositions.

There is appeal to all device manufacturers (not just mobile phone) to add functionality to their existing end-user devices which will not just find services such as nearest hotel, train, restaurant – but can actually engage these Merchants in a sales process, remotely, at the touch of a button.  Haggle will therefore support key developments in the payment processing arena such as mobile-wallet or purse.

In the long term, Haggle offers a viable replacement to corporate inventory systems including web-aggregators where the pricing protocol, howsoever hidden, is still based on fixed-prices.  This includes examples in industries where delinquency of product is an issue (travel intermediaries, airlines, hire-car, hotel-aggregators) as well as all-other-services, all-other-times.  Closed-loop Haggle retailing affords merchants real-time-demand pricing – sufficient to revolutionise returns on investment. 

For further information on Haggle business case, please contact:

russell@haggleagent.co.uk