The Haggle-O-Tron: Re-inventing Economic Transactions in Secondhand Retail

Abstract

Secondhand retail in the UK charity sector plays a number of important social and economic roles: charity shops are community focal points; money is generated for good causes; and goods are re-circulated that might otherwise be discarded as abject and unwanted. However, like much of the UK high street, the prosperity of charity shops is under significant threat from the rise of internet shopping. Access to online markets via smart phones equips customers to check prices for secondhand items, some customers then deploy information, usually from eBay, to haggle with shop staff. The Haggle-o-Tron playfully subverts both normative and emerging secondhand retail valuation practices by revealing secondhand goods' financial, moral, social and aesthetic properties. This paper reports on how we employ vibrant yet uncomplicated design interventions that embed the charity's values and ethos to reconfigure store-based economic transactions.