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"Dynamic pricing can allow Wendy's to be competitive and flexible with pricing, motivate customers to visit and provide them with the food they love at a great value. We will test a number of features that we think will provide an enhanced customer and crew experience." So I guess that means somethings things will cost most and sometimes things will cost less? I would hope there's something on those digital signs tha…
This is not going to be well-received by their customers and is likely to send business to McDonald's and Burger King instead. They also really shouldn't be doing "suggestive selling" whether with humans or machines. Just shut up and take the customer's order rather than trying to talk them into ordering something. Nobody likes when stores or restaurants do that even if it "increases metrics" because some people choo…
Would you like fries with that?
Are you interested in the catch of the day?
May I suggest a wine to pair with that?
Unlimited breadsticks!
And consumers can experiment with eating elsewhere. This is a good example of dystopian capitalism run amok. Next logical step --- they track those that fall for this and start charging them "surge" prices all the time. Then some accountant gets the bright idea that they can sell their "sucker list" to other like minded establishments. And soon these "suckers" will find themselves branded for life. Where ever they go…
Will they increase the pay of the employees who work during the surge periods proportionally to the size of the price increase?
Wait until they realize that they can tie this AI into facial recognition at those big screen kiosks and they change the prices based on the appearance of the person ordering.
This is not going to be well-received by their customers and is likely to send business to McDonald's and Burger King instead. They also really shouldn't be doing "suggestive selling" whether with humans or machines. Just shut up and take the customer's order rather than trying to talk them into ordering something. Nobody likes when stores or restaurants do that even if it "increases metrics" because some people choo…
> likely to send business to McDonalds Wendy’s is doing this in order to compete with McDonalds, which has been pushing up prices much faster than inflation for several years in a row… and McDonalds has publicly claimed it’s not hurting their business. https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-price-hikes-puttin...
When Uber/Lyft are surging it incentivise more drivers to go to the surge area. This raises supply and the surge rate decreases. Drivers are distributed automatically where they are needed. Overall trips taken should be higher compared with a no surging model. So it shifts both the demand (higher ride price) and the supply curves dynamically. That’s an easier model to market to customers as there is at least some logical sense behind it.
However in Wendys case dynamic pricing has no effect on supply. It just modifies the demand curve.
Fundamentally they are betting that their food demand is inelastic enough that they’ll make more money overall. That just feels more exploitative and is going to be harder to market.