427
Amazon reportedly used a secret algorithm to jack up prices
(www.theverge.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
427 points (97.1% liked)
A Boring Dystopia
9756 readers
174 users here now
Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.
Rules (Subject to Change)
--Be a Decent Human Being
--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title
--Posts must have something to do with the topic
--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.
--No NSFW content
--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
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
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.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's no specific law for that, and that most stores did price updates in early/after hours to avoid foot traffic while open. Some place I know generally did it while stocking
I'm pretty sure I've actually seen those tickets flashing while I was shopping.