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How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

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Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#91

Post by cjg_ »

aorth wrote: post #87

Slightly related: I was just looking to buy Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac for my mother. She's American, but I'm currently in Bulgaria. The Microsoft web store says it's $149 but when I add it to my cart it becomes 289 Bulgarian Leva, which is about $174 (and the whole page annoyingly switches to the Bulgarian language). Then I look on Amazon.com and see you can get it for $129. God I hate digital software pricing.

Seems like the price difference easily can be explained by the 20% VAT rate in Bulgaria?

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#92

Post by smn1234 »

so this is retailers doing "a/b testing" across different devices to see how much money they can happen to squeeze out of you depending on which experience you're willing to use to complete the transaction? Is mobile shopping costlier because of added cost to build the mobile app? Is it because mobile users don't do as much comparative research? Is it throwing a dart in the dark to hope mobile users are least likely to have time to shop around and will purchase given limited time to make a decision?

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#93

Post by smn1234 »

bo1024 wrote: 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…

why have something/someone purchase for you on your behalf when you can browse through aggregators to find what you like? For instance, there's shopittome. I'd much prefer to select from a list of offerings and sources rather than pay premium for someone/something placing the order and then having to navigate obstacles to return (where accepted) if the item is ill fit.

Not just limited to fashion here... electronics, tickets for inconvenient travel time, food, etc.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#94

Post by Macha »

I wonder how sustainable some of these approaches are and how often people will just stop buying from places that prey on them too much. For example, I'll often end up paying more for e.g. flights if it's not too costly and it removes the hassle of comparing days/large numbers of airlines to save 50 bucks. But if they started charging me double what others were paying, I'd just stop using that airline.

Likewise, I've noticed a similar behaviour with ads on youtube. If you always click the skip ad button, you'll always get the 15s unskippable ads, or 30s ads. But when I stopped for a while (because a lot of the channels I watch are solely supported by them), YouTube kept pushing the line until it was showing 5 minute ads for 10 minute videos. So now I skip them again to avoid the gradual creeping increase in ad length.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#95

Post by icantdrive55 »

cosmie wrote: post #49
laxatives wrote: post #10

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.

I didn't know that about wine.

It's not going to affect my wine buys. I only buy their $2.49 bottle. Amazon raised the price to $2.99 (it's a terrible wine. The better palates buy the pricey stuff. To me it's just medicine. So please don't buy it.)

Now to Amazon lower prices:

They systematically raised everything in the stores a few cents to a few dollars.

Believe me, I know. I know their price of rice, butter, milk, bread, gluten fee this/that. Somedays I get dizzy looking at ingredients. Somedays I need to pop a Klonopin in the bathroom just to get out of there.

I have a Grandmother who is hypnotized into shopping there. Every Sunday I take her there. I get pretty much the same stuff for her weekly. I have been shopping there for 10 plus years.

"They raised priced? Here, here you troll. The boy genius lowered prices?"

Yes--he told his managers use a few sales items as Lost Liters. There's about 10-20 sales items that are a good deal. Bananas come to mind. I can only eat a few bananas before they go bad, but you can freeze them. They are 29 cents a lb. At Costco you could feed a family of monkeys for $1.29.

My point is Amazon, so far, has done nothing to reverse, "Whole Paycheck", at least so far.

Probally more than you ever wanted to know about WF's prices?

(Is it still better than dealing with angry help at Safeway--sadily yes. It's too bad Safeway managed to piss off every employee in the corporation, and fill those stores up with so much Signature salty crap.)

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#96

Post by pbhjpbhj »

mysterypie wrote: post #29
astura wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> So a travel agent. Travel agents were never on the side of the consumer. If you asked travel agents who they perceived they were working for, they'd tell you it's the airlines. This is not just my opinion; in travel industry magazines, articles, etc., this definitely was their stance. They'd choose flights for you that were most profitable for themselves and/or the airlines (and those two factors coincide nicely).…

In UK in the past we got better deals from the local travel agent than you could book direct from the suppliers. That's going back quite a long way however.

When travel agents were local shops, like a local boutique clothing shop, it would seem they had a lot to lose and not that much to gain by working against their customers interests.

In short I wouldn't say "never".

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#97

Post by alkonaut »

baxtr wrote: post #85
edem wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can have TensorFlow do it...one model to rule them all...there will be neural networks fitting retailers, then there will be adversarial networks deployed by retailers, then NCMs (network counter measure)... the price will be high, since more and more will be consumed by the networks, then as an emergent behavior Skynet will rise and it will launch the missiles...

What about blockchain technology? That would sure help, too...

Once the deep learning blockchains are on quantum computers this will all be easy

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#98

Post by aorth »

cjg_ wrote: post #91
aorth wrote: post #87

Slightly related: I was just looking to buy Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac for my mother. She's American, but I'm currently in Bulgaria. The Microsoft web store says it's $149 but when I add it to my cart it becomes 289 Bulgarian Leva, which is about $174 (and the whole page annoyingly switches to the Bulgarian language). Then I look on Amazon.com and see you can get it for $129. God I hate digital software pricing.

Seems like the price difference easily can be explained by the 20% VAT rate in Bulgaria?

Ah, indeed!

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#99

Post by Nokinside »

Several pricing methods together for close to optimal price discrimination.

1. Scientific experiment to determine the price. With enough customers, it's possible to determine optimal price level using scientific method. Vary the price and see how it affects demand and discover what customers are willing to pay.

2. Divide customers into segments, and apply scientific pricing into segments. Segmenting can be heuristic based on devices used and behaviour.

3. Personalization comes last. It's segmentation in the finest level. If user be identified, his social networks analyzed etc, it's possible to model his behaviour and determine users price sensitivity and how the user perceives value. Triggering purchase decision can be personalized. For some people showing generated review or rating helps to make a decision, for some you need to show purity values (images of people in white clothes in the sun), for some you must indicate that they are able to "win" over the seller. Access to the mobile gaming data with in app purchases is massive leg up in personal profiling. Data from mobile gaming can be used to experiment and model personal behaviour and personality.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#100

Post by germanier »

kuschku wrote: post #63
germanier wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In their German home turf they started a huge ad campaign last year (their first ever except for a weekly newspaper ad) and even started to discount some of their regular product lines. Maybe the days they could survive without all that are over?

ALDI Süd has, yeah, but afaik ALDI Nord only launched some ad campaigns in the past days, right? And from what I know, that’s less about survival, and more that they can’t expand horizontally anymore, and the new owners (the Albrechts both died in the past years) also want to expand vertically into other market segments.

They both started about a year ago with a huge budget for ads online, on TV, on radio, on billboards, and in cinemas. They haven’t really talked about their decision (they never do). They lost a lot of market share to other supermarkets and especially to the heavily-advertising Lidl. Surely the new managers played an important role in that decision. In other countries they always advertised.
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