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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

#41

Post by deelowe »

ars wrote: post #29
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.

Watch out. Walmart gets different SKUs for the products they carry. I've seen snacks that were a couple of ounces smaller, for example. Also, their meat and produce is much lower quality than other places.

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#42

Post by ptero »

im3w1l wrote: post #26
wfunction wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!

IIRC one of the US grocers (stop and shop or Kroger?) actually tried that as an ad for their store card: "you do not even know how much you will pay for many products, but it will be a lower price". Needless to say this didn't run for a long time.

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#44

Post by israrkhan »

This is a very unfortunate trend where sellers are selling not based on the value of the item/service, but demand/need of the consumer. It has been a common practice in airline industry, and upto some extent in healthcare. But now this practice is creeping into online shopping too. This can soon fall into unethical territory. Imagine an item, that costs $1. Just because it could be life-saving for someone, or someone needs it badly, you sell it at much higher premium. You are not charging for your service, but exploiting other people need.

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#45

Post by bognition »

israrkhan wrote: post #44

This is a very unfortunate trend where sellers are selling not based on the value of the item/service, but demand/need of the consumer. It has been a common practice in airline industry, and upto some extent in healthcare. But now this practice is creeping into online shopping too. This can soon fall into unethical territory. Imagine an item, that costs $1. Just because it could be life-saving for someone, or someone…

you've just described capitalism

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#46

Post by an_account »

israrkhan wrote: post #44

This is a very unfortunate trend where sellers are selling not based on the value of the item/service, but demand/need of the consumer. It has been a common practice in airline industry, and upto some extent in healthcare. But now this practice is creeping into online shopping too. This can soon fall into unethical territory. Imagine an item, that costs $1. Just because it could be life-saving for someone, or someone…

That's always been true, nothing new to online shopping. If there's a large profit margin other companies will come in and undercut the price.

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#47

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

downandout wrote: post #39

I try to put this on all WSJ articles that make the front page. Here is a direct link to this story that will auto-kill the paywall: https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fa... If you want a draggable bookmarklet that will bypass the paywall for all WSJ articles, go here: http://salzeko.com/wsj/ It would be nice if HN would make a change to their link submission code so that it automatically chang…

Or pay.

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#48

Post by michalskop »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #12

I don't see what's so special about continuously updating your price as a seller. This happens in pretty much every grocery market in the Middle East or Eastern Europe. I also don't understand how the supposedly fierce competition between sellers ends up yielding prices that are higher than offline stores. Seems the reporter missed the true story.

What places do you have in mind talking about Eastern Europe? "Grocery market" for 99 % of people (from Eastern Europe) is a "shop"/supermarket/mall (think of Lidl, Tesco or Carrefour as examples) and even outdoor markets, if they exist at all, usually have set prices (which may change during the day, of course).

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#49

Post by downandout »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #47
downandout wrote: post #39

I try to put this on all WSJ articles that make the front page. Here is a direct link to this story that will auto-kill the paywall: https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fa... If you want a draggable bookmarklet that will bypass the paywall for all WSJ articles, go here: http://salzeko.com/wsj/ It would be nice if HN would make a change to their link submission code so that it automatically chang…

Or pay .

Most people on HN are not WSJ subscribers. Given that the purpose of posting links on HN is to be able to discuss them, WSJ links should either a) not be posted here, or b) they should have a paywall workaround automatically built-in. The entire reason that the "web" link exists is because it was assumed that sites would not risk being deindexed by Google for cloaking, and would therefore disable their paywalls when Google was the referrer. WSJ is the only major site that has chosen to brazenly run afoul of Google's cloaking policy (sadly, they have not yet suffered the consequences). So they warrant special treatment here, and by implementation of the "web" link, HN has already shown that it is willing to assist in paywall bypass.

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#50

Post by michalskop »

Animats wrote: post #6
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.

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

Carrefour in France was using it already some 10 years ago. More current photo: https://theworklife.com/graham-miln/files/2013/12/2013-09-ei...
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