Adieu Price Transparency: Dynamic Pricing now also for Consumer Goods

The concept has been known for a long time for flights and hotel rooms: when they are booked is decisive for the price. The Wall Street Journal wrote a little while ago, that the process has now spread to consumer goods, which should already sound familiar to Amazon shoppers. The whole thing calls itself dynamic pricing strategy.

Online prices are by no means stabile anymore, but change as often as desired: we are talking about up to 11x a day. “Coming Soon: Toilet Paper Priced Like Airline Tickets” sums it up nicely.

Among other things, the background is the “sort according to lowest price” function, which always puts the cheapest offer in the top position, even if there is only a once cent price difference, making results lists no longer static. Additionally, the individual payment readiness of the customer can be sounded out.

Bergin hunters have the possibility to establish the perfect buying moment, in addition to the cheapest provider, assuming there is enough time. In any case, buying consumer goods is rarely tied to a specific time, in contrast to flights.

The interesting question is what effects this trend will have in the web and online shopping generally. With “Decide” there is already an app which will recognise the best product price. Price search engines, which also show the daily price curve for the relevant product category, would also be conceivable.