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How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

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Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#111

Post by jstanley »

Spivak wrote: post #110
jstanley wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do on my computer, but I watch a lot of YouTube on my phone.

I ran AdBlock Plus for a while until I discovered that it runs as an open proxy, allowing anyone on the same wifi network as you to fetch content through your phone.

In combination with a VPN client that routes everything over the VPN, I considered that an unacceptable risk.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#112

Post by Spivak »

jstanley wrote: post #111
Spivak wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I do on my computer, but I watch a lot of YouTube on my phone. I ran AdBlock Plus for a while until I discovered that it runs as an open proxy, allowing anyone on the same wifi network as you to fetch content through your phone. In combination with a VPN client that routes everything over the VPN, I considered that an unacceptable risk.

Firefox for Android has extension supprort and in particular uBlock origin support. Same as your desktop browser.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#113

Post by hnhg »

Nokinside wrote: post #107
hnhg wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What are they, out of interest? Is there a good primer anywhere online?

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#114

Post by praulv »

hiram112 wrote: post #76
bogomipz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Morally it seems fair. But like most things in our system, I'm sure it will end up being rigged legally in the big guy's favor. Look at our system now. Big capital can move their tax headquarters to Ireland, its service center to India, its manufacturing to China. Hell, they can now even import low wage workers to the EU and US on visas if it will give them an advantage. But good luck to any consumer trying to buy pr…

I've always wondered why it's not possible to get insider info from purchasing depts on factory details so we're not simply paying for over inflated brands to line corporate pockets.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#115

Post by username223 »

averagewall wrote: post #106
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 l…

> Custom pricing feels like buying from a shopkeeper with no price stickers.

This is one of the best things about living in the developed world: most things are bought without haggling. All of your most stressful and miserable transactions -- buying a car, booking a flight, tipping a server -- lack a fixed, public price. Dynamic pricing based on digital surveillance is a huge step backward.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#117

Post by username223 »

Freak_NL wrote: post #83
shubhamjain wrote: post #33

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…

It's not email addresses they want most dearly though (although it is used and correlated of course) it is that nice unique identifier that is your (mobile) phone number. For smartphone apps it is the default (and often only) identifier (and conveniently, it is also the one identifier nearly always present in the contact lists they guzzle in). A lot of services on the web want your phone number too; as a contact on t…

This is why I'm always reluctant to sign up for 2FA, opting instead for long randomly-generated passwords and a password manager when I care about an account. Google/FB having my phone number is way worse than someone hacking my crappy FB profile or spam-catching Gmail account.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#118

Post by rahimnathwani »

Summary: Except for auto dealerships, retailers don't use personalized prices.

What a terrible article:

1) Its first example of "personalized pricing" isn't actually personalised: it was the result of an A/B test.

2) It says 'Outsize profits can be extracted from “top of the demand curve” customers' when, in fact, the top of the demand curve is normally when price is zero. The author seems to acknowledge this as they reference 'the downward sloping demand curve highlighted in Economics 101'.

3) The only convincing example given in the article is that of 'auto dealerships', which are the least typical retailers there are. People hate going to auto dealerships, but they love doing other types of shopping, in-person or online. Part of the reason is the personalized pricing (and process of haggling), but this has existed for many years, and the rise of the internet has actually made it easier for consumers, not harder, to get a reasonable deal.

4) "A key question is whether personalized pricing, on the web or in-store, is ethical." A better question would be 'How do retailers use personalized prices?'. That's the question I thought would be answered, given the title. The author's answer seems to be "Except for auto dealerships, they don't".

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#119

Post by digitalengineer »

baxtr wrote: post #66
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…

I have been thinking about that exact service for a while. One big issue is that you need the reverse engineer the pricing models of retailers, i.e. mapping out a high-dimensional space. For that you need a lot of data from the retailers . They could probably ban you quickly if you start pulling price quotes en masse. Then you need to invest a lot in cloaking techniques etc.

You’re over-thinking it, I think. All you need to do is provide a service that makes the E-commerce website think you’re not a big spender: geo: live in a poorer neighborhood, and age/gender/preferences must be the most optimal for you not them. Each experience (as they call it was pre-defined and pre-build).

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#120

Post by howard941 »

ben1040 wrote: post #11

Orbitz also played with how they rank search results. After finding Mac users were likely to spend 30% more on a nightly room rate, they started putting higher priced rooms at the top when Mac users searched. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/06/26/155756095/...

Take that idea in the other direction. Vendor tie-in with browser maker to grant users a decent discount for use of IE or even the new and allegedly compromised Opera? I'll give it a shot on your site.
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