Does anyone know what economic conditions cause a market to transition from being car/house-like (no fixed price, annoying sales process) to what is normal for cheaper products in first world countries (more-or-less fixed prices, less aggressive selling)? Is it related to products'scarcity?
From my own experience I know that even products that normally have fixed prices in the first world (cell phones, bikes, anything really) are sold more like cars in a lot of developing countries where bartering is the norm. You might find them available for drastically different prices even in the same locale and it is frequently necessary to waste time and energy keeping track of the going price for a particular product that you are considering buying.
Maximal value extraction is probably the answer. If more profit can be made in a given market/product combination through direct selling then this will be the model, if a commodity approach extracts more value then it will prevail. There should be a natural progression from the former to the latter as a market matures and buyer sophistication increases. In the case of cars the purchase is infrequent and specialized enough that the market has been slow to mature in buyer sophistication.
Of course the buyers are uneven in their knowledge, so in the phone market you have a range. Similarly in cars there is now an opportunity with a small number of highly informed and opinionated consumers who find Tesla attractive. (disclosure: I'm a happy shareholder)
my guess about the car industry is it had to do with the interaction between diverse customer preferences (car colors, options) and the realities of car production (large batches, economies of scale).
basically, the economies of scale cause the production of large batches of cars that then all needed to be sold (even that last white one on the lot).
From my own experience I know that even products that normally have fixed prices in the first world (cell phones, bikes, anything really) are sold more like cars in a lot of developing countries where bartering is the norm. You might find them available for drastically different prices even in the same locale and it is frequently necessary to waste time and energy keeping track of the going price for a particular product that you are considering buying.