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How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

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41–50 of 154 posts

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "We find you the lowest price"... "We find you the lowest price (that we think you'll actually purchase)". FTFY?

Supply and demand except on the individual level?

Yes. This if a very old concept and everything used to be sold this way in the market place. No price tags or signs anywhere. Learn how to haggle and try and get the friend discount.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#42
post #24
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think grocery retailers "raise prices" across the board. I think the "charity bundling" concept is just for P.R. The company presents the big check at the end of the campaign, and the public then credits the company, even if the company itself contributed nothing beyond a little (deductible) personnel time. The Ronald McDonald House perfected that mechanism. Some retailers used to do the same with pooling cus…

BTW, I'm not opposed to this mechanism if the retailer is matching customer contributions .

Often they tout that donations are matched. In the fine print, they disclose that there's a limit to the matching. So if the limit is low, then the "matching" concept is effectively illusory.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#43
post #2

Retailers who ask customers if they would like to donate to charity after a sale are using it as a test to see if they can raise prices.

They also use it as a tax write off...

(former) tax lawyer here. This is definitely not possible, at least in the US. They could only take a deduction if they first recognized the donation as income — which would defeat the purpose and also be a very odd way of characterizing the transaction.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#45
post #16

At some point in the next 5 years, I predict there will online services that will "proxy-shop" for you. They will specialize in building profiles (cookies, logins, etc) that get offered low prices, then use these to purchase products on your behalf. Perhaps a browser plugin, so that at the moment you go to check out on a product, you send the product's link to the service and they get it for you at a lower price. The…

I really like this, why not dynamic purchasing if consumers are increasingly confronted by dynamic pricing? Are there reasons why this wouldn't work? I am curious what would the legal challenge be if dynamic pricing on the sell side is considered acceptable?

I am curious what would the legal challenge be if dynamic pricing on the sell side is considered acceptable?

Indeed, this seems to me to be no different than a form of reselling.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#46
post #19
post #16

At some point in the next 5 years, I predict there will online services that will "proxy-shop" for you. They will specialize in building profiles (cookies, logins, etc) that get offered low prices, then use these to purchase products on your behalf. Perhaps a browser plugin, so that at the moment you go to check out on a product, you send the product's link to the service and they get it for you at a lower price. The…

So a travel agent? What's old is new again, I guess.

Ha. No, the big difference here is the deception factor. Using online retailers' personalization against them.

A "meatspace" analogue from 50 years ago would be wearing a disguise to avoid discrimination, for example a woman dressing up in a coat/hat/fake mustache to avoid getting ripped off at the car dealership.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#47

The extent of my profile that can be built (and is probably available) is absolutely insane. Picture this: most people use a single email ID to register anywhere. Dating sites, e-commerce, social networks, banks, and even offline stores. My online purchases can be linked with my preferences on OKCupid that can be linked to ads I am clicking that can be linked to my offline behaviour. Personalised pricing is direct re…

Whether on Google Apps or using Exim, all my domains have a catch all address so emails to unmatched local names (addresses) are sent to a single inbox. I then use servicename@mydomain.tld for registration at each service.

It's not much more difficult to circumvent than gmail's +randomname but a little fuzzier. There's no way to know from the outside how many people are using each domain.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#48

The extent of my profile that can be built (and is probably available) is absolutely insane. Picture this: most people use a single email ID to register anywhere. Dating sites, e-commerce, social networks, banks, and even offline stores. My online purchases can be linked with my preferences on OKCupid that can be linked to ads I am clicking that can be linked to my offline behaviour. Personalised pricing is direct re…

Fastmail offers you up to 100 email aliases (2 per each of 50 different domains) which route to your main account.

Edit: it's actually 600 aliases now: https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/limits.html

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#49

There must be some incredible data being mined by Amazon via Whole Foods. At the Whole Foods in Palo Alto, there seems to be an elaborate pricing experiment in the ice cream department. Entire brands (Talenti) are dropped in price 70%. Other times, particular flavors are reduced that much, sometimes less so. For Talenti, the entire brand is sold out. Some of the on-sale flavors go quickly or are also sold out while o…

To your point on beer and wine: state liquor licensing boards control retail pricing structures pretty heavily. In Tennessee for example (the state I’m most familiar with), the price of beer can be set at whatever, but liquor can’t be sold below cost and wine can’t be sold below a 20% markup over cost. It makes discounting a bit tricky, to ensure you stay compliant. Especially if you already have competitive pricing.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#50

Slightly related. I regret not having taken a screenshot to prove it, but oh well. A friend and I both open google.com and type weather. We are on the same Wifi, both using chrome, both signed in, and we each get our very own current temperature for the exact same city. Different by a few degrees that is. We hard refresh, we sign out, we clear cookies, still different on each machine. With personalisation I wonder if…

How would they know how hot it feels for you? Have you given any input on that?
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