Hasn’t the travel, cruise and holiday industry been doing this for decades now?
Most companies that sell products do this in some form. The only thing that’s secret about it is the particular process and code, since that’s confidential company info.
A few years ago I remember speaking with a Walmart GM about this sort of thing, and they mentioned how their site in their region would receive price updates after their volume, revenue, staffing, supply chain logistics to their site, etc., were analyzed. Admittedly, I don’t know if they had real analysts or machine learning, or a mix of the two (likely both, since it was 5 or 6 years ago).
A key point to this is that most businesses selling things buy most of their products from suppliers, who have their own pricing mechanisms - which causes downstream businesses to adjust accordingly.
We’ll see it down to the minute in B&M storefronts soon as well. The local Superstore and Walmart already have digital price tags on shelves. Milk could go up $0.50/L between the time you grab it off the shelf and then finish shopping to hit the checkout.
A bunch of people buying cookies? Oh, better raise that price by $1.50/box
That sounds extremely problematic for consumers when the price can be change so easily. I would be hesitant to buy anything from there knowing that I may spend a lot more money from picking the item of the shelf and the cash register.
I have a feeling that wouldn’t be legal.
When I had to change price tickets, from memory, the lower prices went into effect that morning, but any price increases wouldn’t go into effect until the next day?
The customer always receives the lower price, and I didn’t get screamed at when I hopped back on the cash register.
Is it the scale of sales that matters? Like if I make an Etsy shop and set my prices based on competitors, is that illegal?
Scamazon
How would this be enforced? Also, can we rely on the FTC to do their job quickly and effectively when we’re just now hearing about something that’s reported to have ended four years ago?
Of course… That’s their whole business model
It’s literally anyone’s business model in a capitalistic market, it’s hilarious that people are shocked and offended
It’s still shocking and offensive to be confronted with the truth of something you already knew.
Everyone knows that the rich would happily stab you in the face for your pocket change, but actually seeing rich people commission sophisticated software designed to do just that is still confronting.
I guess? I always just assume that’s what’s going on all the time. But there’s also people that are going to be massively hyperbolic like yourself too, which I also assume is going on all the time. Everyone is just trying to get money.
Also I wouldn’t call this software sophisticated at all, its pretty rudimentary. It’s just comparing numbers and adjusting them by an offset. They also stopped using it, I assume because it wasn’t sophisticated enough to account for the myriad of market forces at play.