Shopping Chinese Style!

Team Buying
We all know that if you buy in bulk, you’ll usually get some type of discount, but some enterprising people in China are taking that a step further by organizing online and then visiting a store like a flash mob to team buy items.

Welcome to China’s newest shopping craze, tuangou, or team buying. By combining the power of the Internet to compare prices with the stealth tactics of the flash mob, team buyers are driving hard bargains in the world’s hottest economy. Many team-buying websites have sprung up to catch the trend, which first began in online forums and chat rooms.

So instead of one person buying a $300 camera, 15 strangers meet up at the store to bulk purchase the cameras at a discount. The organizer of the team buy goes with the group and serves as the main negotiator and can form organized walk outs if the deal isn’t good.

Bargaining as a way of life
Typically, shoppers looking for the same items find each other online, then band together offline to negotiate special deals on electronics, home furnishings and automobiles. Some team buyers approach store managers beforehand. Others simply show up and flex their collective muscle.

Bargaining is a way of life in China. Shoppers treat sticker prices as a starting point for negotiations, and it's a point of pride to strike a tough bargain or walk away if unhappy.

This habit of face-to-face haggling is one reason why regular online shopping is only slowly catching on in China, which has more than 110 million Internet users, second only to the U.S. E-commerce, was worth around $1 billion in 2005, according to Beijing-based research company iResearch. Many shoppers, though, prefer cash-on-delivery or checks to online payment systems, and credit cards aren't widely used.