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How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

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Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#101

Post by jstanley »

Macha wrote: post #94

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…

I refuse to participate in YouTube's opaque ad selection system. If the video has an ad, even if it's skippable after 5s, I don't watch the video.

I very rarely get shown ads.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#102

Post by ghaff »

cptskippy wrote: post #32
mysterypie wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).…

I was explaining travel agents to my kid the other day. The service of the agent was more than just booking you a flight, you were paying for their knowledge and experience with traveling in particular regions. Resources like Zagat were helpful but could only get you so far. In pre internet days if you were flying to far away places like India or Vietnam where your local airline didn't offer service, you would have n…

To be fair, the bread and butter for most travel agents was booking flights, cruises, and tour packages. Which is why the corner travel agent isn’t around any longer for the most part. Yes, some were more knowledgeable. My parents used a couple of them over the years.

These types of travel agents still exist but they’re generally specialty travel, adventure travel, etc. companies that handle a combination of group trips with guides and private trips with or without guides. Besides the big global ones there are many that concentrate regionally and/or in a particular type of activity.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#103

Post by hnhg »

Nokinside wrote: post #99

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…

You need scale for all of these, right? How would you start with an entirely new product or service with no previous presence in the market?

I guess you could look at similar products but if you're targeting a new market entirely, you might have no assurances that your assumptions are correct.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#104

Post by [deleted] »

jstanley wrote: post #101
Macha wrote: post #94

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…

I refuse to participate in YouTube's opaque ad selection system. If the video has an ad, even if it's skippable after 5s, I don't watch the video. I very rarely get shown ads.

[deleted]

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#105

Post by kuschku »

germanier wrote: post #100
kuschku wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know they’ve experimented for a while, but I don’t think Nord launched a major ad campaign until recently.

Supermarktblog documents these changes quite well, IMO.

https://www.supermarktblog.com/2017/10/02/aldi-nord-in-renov...

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#106

Post by averagewall »

Macha wrote: post #94

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…

I now buy flights direct from airlines because of the dirty tricks of resellers. They've been terrible at sorting out missed connections (please get a paper document in person from the middle-of-nowhere stopover airport to prove it was their fault, and not going to refund legs on a 2nd airline at all) and do dirty tricks like not actually booking your ticket when you pay but waiting till they expect to get it for a lower price, which might mean not getting it at all. I know airlines overbook too but it's one less reason for an already stressful trip to go wrong.

Custom pricing feels like buying from a shopkeeper with no price stickers. You expect to get charged according to what he judges you can afford. It removes the value of being able to rely on all the other customers to collectively decide if the price is fair or not. That means every customer has to individually evaluate every price which is a massive waste of effort.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#107

Post by Nokinside »

hnhg wrote: post #103
Nokinside wrote: post #99

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…

You need scale for all of these, right? How would you start with an entirely new product or service with no previous presence in the market? I guess you could look at similar products but if you're targeting a new market entirely, you might have no assurances that your assumptions are correct.

You revert back to more traditional pricing methods.

Pricing was advanced field even before the internet. Everyone doing it should first study pricing at least few days to get a feel and ideas and to know what kind of pricing methods to use and how to determine the initial price and how to change it.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#109

Post by akvadrako »

imron wrote: post #54
vtail wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you're using fastmail you don't even have to worry about that limit. If your email is example@fastmail.com and you are registering with http://www.onlinestore.com/ Just use onlinestore@example.fastmail.com and fastmail will make sure it arrives in your example@fastmail.com inbox. It's completely hassle free.

You'll still be uniquely identified. Just using fastmail itself is going to greatly narrow the search for your real identity.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#110

Post by Spivak »

jstanley wrote: post #101
Macha wrote: post #94

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…

I refuse to participate in YouTube's opaque ad selection system. If the video has an ad, even if it's skippable after 5s, I don't watch the video. I very rarely get shown ads.

Why not get an ad blocker? Good for attention, privacy, and security.
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