How Retailers Use Personalized Prices • Hacker News Board

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#131

Post by zild3d » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 4:04 PM UTC

crdb wrote: post #73

baxtr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don't. At least we didn't. Here's the real problem: 1. modern shopping sites are built haphazardly without structure; 2. a typical page load time is 10-20 seconds for many (most?) shops. 1. matters because you cannot build a simple crawler. This is because sometimes, the brand is in the title, the description is in the brand, and the gender is in the quantity, which itself is in the photo as a pixellated image...…

> 2. a typical page load time is 10-20 seconds for many (most?) shops.

That sounds very exaggerated, are you quoting this range from actual data?

For a sanity check the first two shops that came to mind loaded in <3 seconds (guitarcenter.com, nike.com)

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#132

Post by dogruck » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 4:10 PM UTC

sharemywin wrote: post #22

dogruck wrote: post #4

Some stores offer coupons and price matching guarantees to attract price sensitive customers. Some stores tout that every customer gets "the same low price." A new facet on the old games.

just a whole lot faster and bunch more data mining.

I remember reading a data science research paper in the early 1990s that explained how Walmart had created a massive database containing all point-of-sale records. The data was stored in a relational database, and Walmart was mining it to be nimble with prices.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#133

Post by praulv » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 4:18 PM UTC

fjsolwmv wrote: post #126

praulv wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Alibaba.com / AliExpress.com

Except they're not the same products are they... often cheap imitations.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#134

Post by majewsky » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 4:20 PM UTC

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.

The Aldi Nord campaign launched last year. I remember because I'm amazed by the campaign's bad typography whenever I see one of the posters in a shop.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#135

Post by yalogin » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 4:32 PM UTC

Is this legal? Can they really code in a different price based on the end user's profile? That sounds super shady to me. I know there have long been suspicions that Amazon does this but I thought all of them turned to be false. If a company as big as Orbitz is doing it, are there other companies that do it too? I am surprised this has not come out sooner.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#136

Post by detaro » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 4:32 PM UTC

fjsolwmv wrote: post #128

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.

How about paying for Youtube Red?

Not available on my continent. Always wondered why they didn't roll that out further.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#137

Post by amelius » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 4:44 PM UTC

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 predict that governments will require shops to show the average price for items.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#138

Post by devdas » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 5:15 PM UTC

bricss wrote: post #89

I may guess that is Booking.com doing the same stuff.

I'm sure they would love to, but they don't hold inventory or set pricing.

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#139

Post by bogomipz » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 5:27 PM UTC

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…

>"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"

Indeed, corporations are now considered people in the US, which more or allows allows then legislate away any perceive threats to the rigged system.[1]

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/raisins...

Re: How Retailers Use Personalized Prices

#140

Post by TheCoelacanth » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 5:32 PM UTC

digitalengineer wrote: post #119

baxtr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Except it's not necessarily that simple. They are also probably taking into account your ability to seek out other options.

Researchers found that black women were getting cars sold to them at a much higher markup than white men. I doubt that is because they were getting profiled as wealthier.