I’ve often heard that before booking hotel rooms, you should clear your browser cache because sites will provide different offers depending on the information garnered from your cookies. One of the optional readings, “How deep are your pockets?; Personalising online price” stood out to me, as I did not know that this method of pricing was so commonly utilized. The text explains how online retailers are being offered software that analyzes a user’s information to determine accurate pricing. For example, if the same IP address repeatedly accesses a site, higher prices will be displayed as opposed to the cheaper rates offered to appeal to first time customers.
This once again brings up the topic of ethical business practices. In a successful business, knowing and appealing to one’s target demographic in order to deliver value propositions is vital. If a company pays for a consumer’s information in order to evaluate their audience, however, I believe it is a blatant infringement of people’s privacy. Corporations need to be extremely cautious when employing such techniques; Amazon received backlash in 2000 when they sold DVDs at differing prices to see which web browsers were favored by shoppers unconcerned with cost.