shopping cart for quotes

we've recently decided to redesign our website, and i noticed that a few of our competitors are using shopping carts functionality on their site, but for quote requests. for example, let's say that i wanted to buy a "blue widget", so i search for the widget on a website. once i get to the "blue widget" page, i then add that widget to my cart, and submit a quote request for it. once i've submitted, a salesperson contacts me and opens up dialog. my question is; does anybody see the benefits of doing this? i personally would prefer to just click a link that would send me to a quote form as opposed to going through the whole "shopping cart" process. i'm assuming that their reasoning for using that feature would be to give visitors a sense of ownership.

what do you think?

 

huh? i don't think that would be necessary...

 

If you already know how much "blue widget" is going to cost then there is no need to make it more difficult on potential buyers. Simply include it. There are certain things that may need human interaction such as getting a quote on a web design, but I don't think I would require that they add anything to a cart for such a thing. That doesn't really make sense.

 

right, interaction is definitely necessary in our market. building trust is a big part of our selling process. i just get interested when i see that one of the dominating websites in our industry is using that feature. it seems pointless though.