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The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

news.morningstar.com

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Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#21

Post by thinkloop »

Spooky23 wrote: post #11

Sounds like a solution looking for a problem to me. For all of this complexity, Amazon rarely has a significant price advantage versus most retail stores. From a customer point of view, competitive categories have a flea market quality to them. For a company that is usually optimized for customer experience, this is a weird science experiment. IMO, they should make price adjustments less fluid. Require merchants to g…

The issue is that there is no such thing as "the lowest price", it depends on supply and demand, and either can fluctuate drastically in short periods of time (i.e. surge pricing for uber). The manipulations the article mentions, that exist in all markets, are very rare.

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#23

Post by Terribledactyl »

sverhagen wrote: post #18
whyenot wrote: post #2

Here is a link without a paywall: http://news.morningstar.com/all/dow-jones/us-markets/2017032...

Sorry for the off-topic, but why is this available free on Morning Star, and paid-for on WSJ? Don't assume Morning Star is ripping WSJ, so is the pay wall a lie (for this (sort of) article)?

It's syndicated, and morning star is more welcoming than wsj.

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#24

Post by rgbrenner »

sverhagen wrote: post #18
whyenot wrote: post #2

Here is a link without a paywall: http://news.morningstar.com/all/dow-jones/us-markets/2017032...

Sorry for the off-topic, but why is this available free on Morning Star, and paid-for on WSJ? Don't assume Morning Star is ripping WSJ, so is the pay wall a lie (for this (sort of) article)?

the author works for wsj.. both wsj and dow jones newswires are owned by news corp. The article was published on dow jones newswires, which morningstar has subscribed to and is paying for.

So the answer is, morningstar has paid for this article.. and they've decided they can make it up using ads or other sources of revenue.

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#25

Post by maxander »

Spooky23 wrote: post #11

Sounds like a solution looking for a problem to me. For all of this complexity, Amazon rarely has a significant price advantage versus most retail stores. From a customer point of view, competitive categories have a flea market quality to them. For a company that is usually optimized for customer experience, this is a weird science experiment. IMO, they should make price adjustments less fluid. Require merchants to g…

I suspect (here as with the earlier story about imposter goods on Amazon) that the explanation for Amazon's behavior is that it doesn't have the resources to moderate the system its created. Disallowing price adjustments altogether wouldn't work for many categories- sometimes the price of milk just does go up, and retailers can't always just eat the difference. Disallowing only manipulative price adjustments would require either a sophisticated AI (which would be liable to fail in perverse-looking ways) or an expensive team of human analysts (which would at least only fail in plausible-looking ways.) But until these sorts of issues really start effecting Amazon's bottom line, its not going to touch them.

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#26

Post by im3w1l »

wfunction wrote: post #8
Animats wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart can't change their prices as fast; humans have to re-label things. For now. Brick and mortar retailers can use radio-controlled e-ink shelf price tags for minute by minute price changes.[1] This hasn't really caught on yet, but the technology is ready. [1] http://www.eink.com/esl_tags.html

> Brick and mortar retailers can use radio-controlled e-ink shelf price tags for minute by minute price changes. How does that even work? You pick up the product and the price changes by the time you go pay for it? Who would like that?

That's what you'd think. But with Best Price Just For You!™ technology, you don't actually get the price on the shelf. You get the lowest listed price in the last hour. If the price is raised you Keep Your Locked In Price™. If the price is lowered you get the new better price!

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#27

Post by ikeboy »

I've used several repricers, it's a must when selling competitive products with a large numbers of skus.

One thing I'll note is that there's up to a 15 minute delay before a price change takes effect.

Also, Amazon will often "suppress" the buy box if no sellers have a good price. You can still buy, but there's an extra step needed. "Other sellers", then add to cart.

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#28

Post by ars »

wfunction wrote: post #8
Animats wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart can't change their prices as fast; humans have to re-label things. For now. Brick and mortar retailers can use radio-controlled e-ink shelf price tags for minute by minute price changes.[1] This hasn't really caught on yet, but the technology is ready. [1] http://www.eink.com/esl_tags.html

> Brick and mortar retailers can use radio-controlled e-ink shelf price tags for minute by minute price changes. How does that even work? You pick up the product and the price changes by the time you go pay for it? Who would like that?

I suspect it's really day by day, not minute by minute. They probably only update overnight.

How would they even have data to justify minute by minute?

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#29

Post by ars »

thinkloop wrote: post #4

It's interesting to know that products on Amazon might not be the lowest price, or always close. I thought there was more manual price research and setting, like Walmart.

I've actually started switching grocery buying to walmart - because they do have the best price, and they have free shipping.

With Amazon it's annoying - I have to keep items in the cart for a while to see how the price ends up. That's worth it for expensive electronics, but not groceries.

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#30

Post by aianus »

wfunction wrote: post #8
Animats wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart can't change their prices as fast; humans have to re-label things. For now. Brick and mortar retailers can use radio-controlled e-ink shelf price tags for minute by minute price changes.[1] This hasn't really caught on yet, but the technology is ready. [1] http://www.eink.com/esl_tags.html

> Brick and mortar retailers can use radio-controlled e-ink shelf price tags for minute by minute price changes. How does that even work? You pick up the product and the price changes by the time you go pay for it? Who would like that?

In case you're not being facetious: the price would change overnight not during business hours.
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