Learn English – A noun meaning a consumer who bargains

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Imagine you have a seller and a buyer who engage in bargaining at a market. Is there a one-word noun that describes a consumer who haggles (but not the seller)? I thought haggler, but that can be applied to both sides.

I want to distinguish between the members of a pair who engage in bargaining. I can call one the seller, but I can't really call the other a buyer, because the purchase does not happen if the bargaining fails (I guess the same objection can be made to the use of seller). I think offerer comes closest to what I am looking for, though I suppose a seller can also be an offerer.

Best Answer

Firstly, Matt is spot-on with bargain hunter.

Secondly, I know you'd probably reject it because you're looking for a single word. And I think that word is bargainer.

A bargain can be thought of as an agreement, but unlike agreement and its other synonyms, bargain implies that it's favorable to the buyer.

  1. A thing bought or offered for sale much more cheaply than is usual or expected (Oxford)

You buy a car 'at a bargain' if you buy it cheap. The salesman doesn't 'sell it at a bargain' if he sells it for a higher profit.

Since most dictioaries list bargainer as a derivative of bargain without its dedicated meaning, the closest I could get for a reference was Urban Dictionary

professional bargainer

In retail, a customer who feels they are absolved, for whatever reason, from paying the full retail, or even sale price, of an item.

This was just to demonstrate that a bargainer is usually understood to be a (prospective) customer.

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