Dynamic pricing
Discussion
A ceiling fan on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Newday-Stepless-Dimmable-...
Now that I'm using Edge a thing called Microsoft Shopping pops up, and tells me how much more expensive the product is than it should be.
Yesterday this fan cost £92.64. Today it costs £131.99. So I won't be buying it.
I'm aware of the law of supply and demand, and distress purchases, but when does dynamic pricing become immoral?
Now that I'm using Edge a thing called Microsoft Shopping pops up, and tells me how much more expensive the product is than it should be.
Yesterday this fan cost £92.64. Today it costs £131.99. So I won't be buying it.
I'm aware of the law of supply and demand, and distress purchases, but when does dynamic pricing become immoral?
I found a better one today, made dynamic pricing seem a bit basic as a game.
I bought something from a business, they share their premises between different trading names which ultimately all sell in the same field (tiling stuff) but to slightly different types of customer. They have physical outlets plus online sales.
On the website I bought it I got a product for one price, quite good pricing plus I could actually pick the stuff up so went for it. If I'd bought the same product, from the same pile of stock, in the same premises, but ordered via a different web shopfront/trading name it was priced 50% higher. It's literally the same stock, even the website is the identical (including the stock counter) apart from the branding and the subset of products it has, plus of course the prices!
It's more or less gaming the simpler end 'retail' type customers though neither outlet was 'trade'. Just one bit was leaning more towards materials and the other more the tiles.
I've seen silly trade vs retail pricing before (tiling attracts some mad retail price gouging) but it's the first time I've seen it as pot luck depending on which site you've clicked on.
I bought something from a business, they share their premises between different trading names which ultimately all sell in the same field (tiling stuff) but to slightly different types of customer. They have physical outlets plus online sales.
On the website I bought it I got a product for one price, quite good pricing plus I could actually pick the stuff up so went for it. If I'd bought the same product, from the same pile of stock, in the same premises, but ordered via a different web shopfront/trading name it was priced 50% higher. It's literally the same stock, even the website is the identical (including the stock counter) apart from the branding and the subset of products it has, plus of course the prices!
It's more or less gaming the simpler end 'retail' type customers though neither outlet was 'trade'. Just one bit was leaning more towards materials and the other more the tiles.
I've seen silly trade vs retail pricing before (tiling attracts some mad retail price gouging) but it's the first time I've seen it as pot luck depending on which site you've clicked on.
Airlines used to do this. You'd plan a trip and check the cost of the flight on the website. If you left the website and then went back to book the flight, even just a few minutes later, the price would have gone up - sometimes by quite a bit. BMi were the worst for this I found.
I discovered a hack whereby I'd search for flights on my computer but hop on someone else's in the office when it came to booking the flight. Quite often the price was less than that which I found earlier. I presume the cookies suggested I was a 'new' customer so triggered incentive pricing whereas they recognised me as a regular customer on my computer so the need for incentive was less.
They then got wise to this and started adjusting the price at checkout when you'd entered your details and thus revealed yourself as a returning customer and not a new one. IIRC, there was a court case that resulted in them no longer being able to do that. Either way, doesn't seem to be as prevalent these days.
I discovered a hack whereby I'd search for flights on my computer but hop on someone else's in the office when it came to booking the flight. Quite often the price was less than that which I found earlier. I presume the cookies suggested I was a 'new' customer so triggered incentive pricing whereas they recognised me as a regular customer on my computer so the need for incentive was less.
They then got wise to this and started adjusting the price at checkout when you'd entered your details and thus revealed yourself as a returning customer and not a new one. IIRC, there was a court case that resulted in them no longer being able to do that. Either way, doesn't seem to be as prevalent these days.
I think the most blatant example, albeit clumsily applied by hand, is my Coop, who take their customers as chumps at the best of times.
A particular brand of yogurt a month ago was priced '£2.00'.
Last week it was marked 'ONLY £2.20'.
Yesterday it was marked 'ONLY £3.00'.
The price going up that much so quickly is one thing - perhaps it was a test product that sold well - but the word 'ONLY' implies that it's been reduced, not increased. If you hadn't seen it before you'd think it was a special offer. Is that deception and if so is it legal?
A particular brand of yogurt a month ago was priced '£2.00'.
Last week it was marked 'ONLY £2.20'.
Yesterday it was marked 'ONLY £3.00'.
The price going up that much so quickly is one thing - perhaps it was a test product that sold well - but the word 'ONLY' implies that it's been reduced, not increased. If you hadn't seen it before you'd think it was a special offer. Is that deception and if so is it legal?
Simpo Two said:
I think the most blatant example, albeit clumsily applied by hand, is my Coop, who take their customers as chumps at the best of times.
A particular brand of yogurt a month ago was priced '£2.00'.
Last week it was marked 'ONLY £2.20'.
Yesterday it was marked 'ONLY £3.00'.
The price going up that much so quickly is one thing - perhaps it was a test product that sold well - but the word 'ONLY' implies that it's been reduced, not increased. If you hadn't seen it before you'd think it was a special offer. Is that deception and if so is it legal?
Similarly we've been buying gravadlax from Tesco for a few weeks. Excellent quality, nice sauce. Today the bargain chiller is stuffed full of it with yellow stickers reducing it to the price we'd been buying it at, expiry date today. Increasing the price by c33% didn't seem to work awfully well.A particular brand of yogurt a month ago was priced '£2.00'.
Last week it was marked 'ONLY £2.20'.
Yesterday it was marked 'ONLY £3.00'.
The price going up that much so quickly is one thing - perhaps it was a test product that sold well - but the word 'ONLY' implies that it's been reduced, not increased. If you hadn't seen it before you'd think it was a special offer. Is that deception and if so is it legal?
Dave Hedgehog said:
Its £102 for me lol
Yep, £102.95 today.The plus side about the Coop's massive price hikes, cutting the product range and most of the checkout staff... is that the bungling burghers in Head Office have actually managed to make a profit - I got some dividend vouchers today. Prices up 10%, cashback 1%. Woot.
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