Here is a guide to how to bargain and get the absolute best price while shopping in China.
Shopping is very popular in China and you can find shops everywhere, whatever your looking for in China you wont have a problem finding it, China has stores for everything. The best place in Beijing to go shopping and bargaining is Silk Street.
Now, bargaining in China is very acceptable in most shops through out China; the most famous of these places to bargain and get the best deals is the Silk Street in Beijing. Here is a guide about bargaining in China as well as some of my own personal tips on how to get extra low prices. Typically at places like Silk Street, where bargaining is expected, the shops will rise the prices pretty high for foreigners, so the key is persistence when your bargaining. Bargaining can be a lot of fun, I typically make it about joking around and make the atmosphere light, I like to become friends with the shop owners, which also helps to get lower prices, but an important thing to remember is to be sure to be respectful.
Here are some tips I have to help you get cheap prices and have some fun with bargaining.
Smile:
One of the most important thing to do is to Smile, its important to keep the atmosphere light and relaxed, not stressful, this helps so that shop owner will be more relaxed and will help you get cheaper prices.
Fun:
Have fun with it, make jokes, and you can even playfully flirt a little with the shop owner. This is my favorite part and which helps me the most with getting the lowest price. I would always create elaborate stories for why they should give me a lower price for the product i want.
Some examples of these stories are such as:
I’m a poor student
I’m Chinese (even though I’m actually an American, I would tell them I’m Chinese and say they should give me a good price)
If I were buying an electronic product I would say I’m a robot and I need it to live.
The girl shop owner would try to flirt with me saying I’m handsome and so forth so that I would give them more money, but I would always turn this around and say because I’m handsome they should give me a better price
So be creative and have fun that’s what’s important.
Flaws:
The second thing to know is that you aren’t going to be buying the highest quality of products while in China, and there is a lot of fake merchandise, and it might brake some time after buying it. However this also helps to your advantage, while bargaining point out flaws in the workmanship of what you are wanting to buy, this will help to get the price lower and put pressure on the shop owner to not charge so high of a price.
Browse the Stores:
A good thing to do is once you find something you like its good to look around first to see the other stores that have the same product, because more often then not you will find stores selling the same things. This helps to find the typical asking price so you can have a basis for where to start with bargaining as well as you can use this as a leverage point to get another store to give you a cheaper price then the other.
The Rule of 1/3:
Once the shop owner gives you a price for a product that you want, a typically good starting point for bargaining is to start with 1/3 of the price of what they suggested. An example of this is I wanted to buy a calligraphy scroll painting of a dragon, and the shop owner started at RMB 100 so I offered RMB 30 to start at.
The Rule of Three:
This is the first rule I ever learned about how to bargain in China I will call it the rule of three, which is to walk away at least three times while bargaining this helps to push the shop owner to drop the price even lower. If you walk away they will chase you and give you a lower price, if they don’t go after you then you will know that the price they gave is pretty close to their last price that they would drop to.
These are the main points to consider when bargaining and shopping in China, i hope they are helpful for you, Good luck, and happy shopping.