A practice known as surveillance pricing — in which people are charged different prices for the same things, based on personal data — has been used to increase prices for everything from ride shares to plane tickets to health care. Shoppers have also figured out that online grocery delivery services may charge some people more than others for the same items.
“It’s actually hard to detect if you’re the victim of surveillance pricing,” Ms. Menin said. “Which then makes it more imperative than ever that we legislate this practice, because this is very difficult to detect for consumers.”
The price of an item should be the price for everyone.
Even apart from the comments above, even as a general matter this is a contested statement. Many items don’t have a fixed price - indeed, outside of a ‘conventional’ retail setting, a lot of items are haggled over or negotiated or auctioned or ‘make me an offer’ transactions. Houses and cars (new and used) are obvious examples of negotiated prices, and many things you buy from an individual (whether on eBay or a garage sale or the email someone sent around at work) have prices that are based on where the buyer and seller land.
Even in ‘conventional’ retail, discounts and coupons and “early bird specials” and senior/AAA/military pricing abound. Sometimes even at chain retail stores the managers will have the flexibility to offer modest discounts or preferential terms to customers who are ‘on the fence’ about buying a product. Etc.
True. But the custom of grocery stores is that there is a fixed price. Yes sometime specials are offered but the special available to everyone.
I would like to see a Kroger customer haggle at the checkout. “Security!” the manager yells.
Sure - but that’s a custom, not necessarily a moral issue. Humans have been bartering and trading and buying and selling for many thousands of years. The practice of fixed price retail is a relatively recent innovation, dating back only to the late 1800’s.
It’s a practice that eased a lot of transactional friction, both for shoppers and retailers, driven by the inefficiency of negotiating for prices over and over again. Now technology has reduced that friction immensely. So it’s not surprising to see retailers exploring going back to a time when transactions were individualized, rather than having prices set for every customer to save friction costs.
So now the factors to base a price is one’s ability to barter, or race, religion, or one’s location. Of course that is currently what is happening. But some laws have been passed ban the practice in certain areas of society.
And with surveillance pricing one doesn’t know one is being targeted So it is stealth pricing.
I’m not aware of any laws prohibiting reaching a price based on your counterparty’s “ability to barter.” Or their location.
I mean, sure. But the seller doesn’t know when you’re using technology to compare their prices to every other retailer in town, or on the internet. You as the buyer also have tools that help you try to find the exact lowest price that a particular product can be sold to you at.
Plus, this happens in every that involves haggling or bargaining or negotiation. When you walk into that bazaar as a tourist, you don’t know that the stallkeeper has sized you up as a rube and is offering you an inflated price or not. No one’s telling you at the car dealership that they’re offering you a smaller discount of the listed price than the guy who came in earlier.
Two tier pricing in common in industry. Major customers usually sign contracts and get lower price.
Anytime you buy on line it is easy for company like Amazon to learn your profile. Do you pay list price or wait for a sale. Are you an impulse buyer. Must have latest fashion.
Our Kiwanis club just bought a bunch of safety escape hammers. Price fell by half after Christmas.
The law used to require price tags on every item in the store. Now posted on shelf and not always up to date when you check out. When prices posted in the store are electronic, price can easily be changed to fit your profile. RFID might reveal who you are, where you bought every item on your person and if you bought on sale or paid list. Your entire profile (and life history) will be in the data center.
Does this get you better service or is it an invasion of privacy?
In keeping with my policy of “Minimizing the Skim”, scam and fraud. I use “reverse surveillance pricing” at Safeway and Fred Meyer (owned by Kroger.) I only buy stuff from them when they email me an offer that is cheaper than what I’d pay for the item at WinCo, the least expensive store in town.
This week Safeway offered me lettuce at $1.34/head and a dozen bakery fresh donuts for $6.74 down from the $10/doz. published price.
Vendors with long histories of skim, scam and fraud I avoid. It’s been more than 10 years since I set foot on a commercial airliner. And while I was happy to book a $500K long-term capital gain off my 20+ year long investment in Avis Rental Car from the short squeeze last month, I wouldn’t rent a car from them.
If there’s skim or scam, you want to make sure you’re on the right side of the transaction.
What does capitalism have to do with it? I’ve been to many places around the world, and it appears that “haggling” over prices is extremely common. Oddly enough, it’s less common in strongly capitalist places and more common in less or not capitalist places. Even at the markets in Communist Russia (in Moscow, and in Nizhny Novgorod where I spent a few weeks), I saw plenty of haggling over prices. Meanwhile at markets in the USA or in Germany, there’s hardly any haggling and prices are usually as marked. Some places even have laws requiring prices to be marked on everything. I don’t think I’ve ever seen classic haggling in Japan, but I bet they have some now and then in the countryside.
Its seems that is likely to change. More bucks to the bottom line & thus increased stock price. I wonder how much that translates into increased CEO stock options.
