Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: Amazon's variable pricing.
Author: Jonathan Hendry Posted: 9/8/2000; 4:37:48 PM Topic: Amazon's variable pricing. Msg #: 21034 (In response to 20925) Prev/Next: 21033 / 21035
It could also be that Amazon is betting many of their customers consider convenience and service to be more important than price, as long as the price is 'good enough'. (A likely scenario in the era of $4.50 Starbucks coffee drinks.) Customers who *are* highly price sensitive should shop elsewhere, or shop Amazon more carefully.Anyhow, at least the prices are posted. Ever notice how many non-web stores don't bother posting prices anymore? Grocery stores, pharmacies, etc. Sometimes the price is only listed in the latest flyer; if it's not in the flyer, you can only assume that they're not changing the prices randomly.
I don't think Amazon, or any retailer, is under any obligation to charge the minimum possible at all times. If anything, as a public company they're obligated to try to charge as much as the market will bear. Well, now the market has a quantum unit of one individual customer.
(This is nothing new either. If you want to see variable pricing in action, look at the stock market. You may pay a price wildly different than either the prior or next purchaser of the same stock. Other, hidden, variables like spread effect price, as well as overhead from your broker. The price you buy at probably isn't the price the stock was sold at, and vice versa.)
But the customer knows the price, and can walk away if it's too much. In the case of shops like Amazon, the retailer has no leverage in the transaction; it's not like someone whose car is in the shop on the lift being told a price which is way out of line. Even then the customer can say no - if they can get their non-functional car home and/or to another mechanic. (Thus the mechanic has the customer wedged.)
Since Amazon has no way of forcing you to buy at a high price, they aren't price-gouging. If someone finds out they might have bought something for a lower price, that just means they should have waited or tried other vendors. (Or cleared their cookies and tried Amazon again.)
It's kind of hard to blame Amazon if you've paid too much; they essentially *told* you to shop for the item elsewhere, by listing a price higher than you might like to pay. If you went ahead and bought anyway, then at the time you must have been weighing considerations other than price, which made the price seem to be worth paying.
Later, though, once buyer's remorse kicks in, you may not remember those other considerations. Thus the retailer looks like the bad guy, even though they weren't hiding anything, forcing you to buy, or engaging in any other significantly shady tricks.
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