Super interesting question, so let’s dive in!

So, business model pricing in goods in the Americas prior to 1850 largely relied on haggling. Typically, people had an idea for a range of what products were worth, and when entering a store or doing business with people, haggling was common. Merchants may post amounts they expected to pay, but it was largely known that many prices were negotiable in most areas. I can’t tell you if fixed pricing was introduced first by Quakers, but I can shed insight into their views around this practice.

That said, Quakers living in Pennsylvania and Maryland and throughout the American colonies or states were largely against this. They saw haggling as a way of swindling people by charging some people more than others. I’m other words, they viewed it as deception or commonly written as “price discrimination.” I actually came across this when researching my own thesis during my master’s degree. Specially, during the American Revolution, Maryland Quakers gathered multiple times a year to discuss not just the war, but business. One of the things they would discuss on at least a semi-annual basis was the value of certain goods, ranging from animals (horses and cows especially) to common goods, like hats. What’s interesting here is that their records clearly indicated that they didn’t believe in raising the price of certain animals if they had more desirable traits.

Similarly, we can see trends of this in Pennsylvania where it’s estimated that around 30% of the population were Quaker in 1776. Pennsylvania merchants were largely known to similarly set prices themselves and make sure they were not unjustly charging people varying prices. That said, I haven’t seen the same diligence between Pennsylvania merchants with fixing prices between communities as I saw with Maryland Quakers (although the Maryland Quaker population were tiny in comparison).

Fix pricing outside Quaker communities takes off in the mid 1800s. Many types of retail department stores, including A.T. Stewart and Lord and Taylor he more as they increased in number over this period. I’m not an expert in retail economic activity in this period, so I’ll end my answer here. Let me know if you have any follow ups.