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Which Price is Right?

Posted by michael on from the cent-of-profits-in-the-air dept.

slashdotNum2Big2Register writes "An interesting article at fastcompany about how things are being priced nowadays. The only drawback that concerns me is how each item and price can be connected to an individual. Amazon was already found to be doing this with their prices."

3 of 350 comments (clear)

  1. nowadays = September of 2000? by patmfitz · · Score: 5, Informative
    how things are being priced nowadays ... Amazon was already found to be doing this with their prices
    The article about Amazon was from September of 2000 - after which they stopped doing it.
  2. What I do with Amazon.. by antis0c · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've known this for a while now. I have a small network at home, a number of Windows workstation, a few Linux workstations and a number of OpenBSD servers. What I do is look for an item on Amazon I want to buy, then go to that item on every available browser on every computer at home. Through Netscape, Mozilla, IE, Konqueror, Opera, Phoenix and Galeon. Then I complete the purchase from the cheapest one.

    It's worked very well for me. Some browsers were as much as 30 dollars more than others for larger priced items. That to me would seem like a grey area in the legal system. You aren't allowed to charge varying prices at regular stores based on the customers appearance. You'd see Walmart getting sued left and right if at the registers they charged 15% more because I was wearing a suit and tie as opposed to looking like white trash. Or charging more for black comedy DVD's if you are black, the ACLU would be all over them in a heartbeat.

    --

    ..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
  3. Except you can't... by zipwow · · Score: 5, Informative

    The point the article was making is that they select people at random within a demographic, and give them *different* prices. They call this scientific pricing because they maintain other people as the 'control', then gauge how you, the experimental group react to the new prices.

    Since the selection is random I don't see an obvious way to exploit it, with the possible exception of re-loading to see if the price changes. Presumably Amazon has some system for preventing that (like requiring you to log in).

    One of the interesting conclusions from many of the retailers interviewed in the article was that discounts should be smaller, but sooner. That sounds good to me, since in general I'm too lazy and impatient to wait around for the 'big sale', and end up paying higher prices. Maybe that same sentiment is why it works?

    -Zipwow

    --
    I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.