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How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

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Re: How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

#31

Post by eropple »

sparkman55 wrote: post #25
GabrielF00 wrote: post #12

They mention HDMI cables specifically. I just went into a Best Buy and asked for their cheapest HDMI cable. The salesman showed me one for $15. The Amazon basics cable is $5.49. If you've got Prime and you factor in the shipping costs of using another website, it's hard to beat Amazon's price.

For cables, Monoprice is also a good alternative (and, generally, price-competitive with Amazon). Another commenter mentioned that Monoprice's HDMI quality has declined; I haven't noticed any problem with their Ethernet and USB cables. For HDMI, Monoprice goes all the way down to $2: http://www.monoprice.com/Search/Index?keyword=hdmi Best Buy preys on the 'I need this cable in 30 minutes for the big presentation' cus…

The main reason I buy cables from Amazon instead of Monoprice is Prime. Monoprice's shipping is always slow for me. (Last gig I was at, we bought a truckload of their monitors, though, on my recommendation. Love those guys, just wish they could ship faster without ruining my wallet.)

Re: How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

#32

Post by GabrielF00 »

returnofthejedi wrote: post #24
xenadu02 wrote: post #2

This has been WalMart's strategy for decades so it shouldn't surprise anyone.

What is Walmart's digital stratergy?

I think WalMart is pretty focused on free ship-to-store. This doesn't appeal to me at all since I live in a big city and going to a suburban Walmart would be a big production. It makes a certain amount of sense for my parents since there's a Walmart neighborhood market five minutes from their house. It eliminates one risk of online purchases (package sitting on your doorstep) but introduces the inconvenience of parking and getting your product from the store's customer service department.

Re: How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

#33

Post by droopyEyelids »

ecaron wrote: post #20
indymike wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can speak to 25 years ago: the answer is yes. Here are some of the things I saw: * Marking items up 30-45 days ahead of a big sale. This allowed our price to be 25% off instead of 10%. Or sometimes, our sale price probably should have been the regular price. This happened all the time, and people fell for it hard. Usually this would happen before a 10% off everything sale. * Price adjustments from competitive shops…

You need to comment more on HN. Everytime I see your username I think "Why doesn't he have more karma - he typically responds with gems."

Probably sticking to what he knows rather than turning into another Internet know it all is what keeps his comments at a high level of quality.

Re: How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

#36

Post by mrkurt »

nkurz wrote: post #28
ecaron wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're welcome to email me at eric@trackif.com and I'd love to chat about it, but I'm not going to hijack this thread with my marketing schpeels ;-)

I have the same question as DiabloD3, and I presume others do as well. Your desire not to hijack is honorable, but private email doesn't scale that well. I fear I'd be wasting your time to engage you directly. Perhaps you could write a short blog post and post it to HN for discussion? Or a Show HN? Or you could just answer here, toning done the marketing as much as possible.

It seems really unlikely you'd waste a company's time by emailing them and asking for a sales pitch.

Re: How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

#37

Post by mynameisvlad »

kenjackson wrote: post #34

Lego pricing on Amazon is generally bad. Often much worse than what Lego sells the sets for. That is one area I'd love to see Amazon change.

Amazon doesn't sell every product themselves. Most are Amazon Marketplace sales, which are entirely 3rd party (some are Fulfilled by Amazon, which gives you the Prime shipping but is still 3rd party). In these cases, Amazon can't control the prices at all; it's all up to the 3rd parties to set the prices.

Re: How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

#38

Post by [deleted] »

indymike wrote: post #18
ecaron wrote: post #5

When I started working on https://trackif.com , I thought the premise was thin because prices couldn't fluctuate that much. I assumed everything gradually declined in price, and that it'd primarily be driven by store-A vs store-B price dropping. Nope. Retailers are just gaming us 24/7. I've become very aware of all the different timeframes retailers offer post-purchase price-matches (published at http://blog.trackif.…

I can speak to 25 years ago: the answer is yes. Here are some of the things I saw: * Marking items up 30-45 days ahead of a big sale. This allowed our price to be 25% off instead of 10%. Or sometimes, our sale price probably should have been the regular price. This happened all the time, and people fell for it hard. Usually this would happen before a 10% off everything sale. * Price adjustments from competitive shops…

[deleted]

Re: How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

#39

Post by corysama »

indymike wrote: post #18
ecaron wrote: post #5

When I started working on https://trackif.com , I thought the premise was thin because prices couldn't fluctuate that much. I assumed everything gradually declined in price, and that it'd primarily be driven by store-A vs store-B price dropping. Nope. Retailers are just gaming us 24/7. I've become very aware of all the different timeframes retailers offer post-purchase price-matches (published at http://blog.trackif.…

I can speak to 25 years ago: the answer is yes. Here are some of the things I saw: * Marking items up 30-45 days ahead of a big sale. This allowed our price to be 25% off instead of 10%. Or sometimes, our sale price probably should have been the regular price. This happened all the time, and people fell for it hard. Usually this would happen before a 10% off everything sale. * Price adjustments from competitive shops…

In the furniture biz, lots of places have laws restricting how many days/year a given shop can do "going out of business"/"total clearance" sales. Otherwise, they tend to run them non-stop for decades because they are so effective at bringing in customers.

According to my friends that have worked furniture retail, it was common practice to mark everything up 300% for a week then have a "40-60% Off!!!" sale. Customers would be very excited about how much money they were "saving" even though the reality was that they were buying at a net markup compared to a few weeks ago. But, a few weeks ago the shop was much, much quieter even though the prices were lower. So, what's a shopkeeper to do?

Re: How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

#40

Post by harvestmoon »

ecaron wrote: post #21
DiabloD3 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I trackif instead of camelcamelcamel? I'm seriously interested. Also, when are you going to add an Android app that does barcode scanning?

You're welcome to email me at eric@trackif.com and I'd love to chat about it, but I'm not going to hijack this thread with my marketing schpeels ;-)

I'd also like to hear more. This is HN - a great place to discuss your product/tool (at the right time, of course)
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