Bargaining Power in Tourist Shopping

摘要

Bargaining behavior is popular when tourists shop, with bargaining power representing the surplus sellers or buyers obtain after price negotiations. This article applies a two-tier stochastic frontier analysis to estimate sellers' and buyers' (i.e., tourists') surplus terms as a measure of their respective bargaining power. Using large-scale data on shopping behavior obtained from a domestic tourist survey conducted in Nanjing, China, between 2005 and 2010, our empirical results indicate that in general, tourists exhibit stronger bargaining power than sellers. Additionally, tourists' net surplus, as a measure of relative bargaining power, is heavily informed by their tripographic and sociodemographic characteristics, with the former being more influential. In particular, tourists traveling with companions and obtaining travel information from friends and mass media tend to have stronger-than-average bargaining power.