Dynamic pricing is nothing new. Many e-commerce Web sites adjust their prices constantly. For example, they base their pricing on variables such as weather, Web site traffic and the actual demand of the moment.
But what if a consumer visits an online shop through Google Shopping - and then pays less than a visitor who buys directly from the website?
It's happening at German online lens retailers Lensbest and Mister Spex.
That's what German blog Etailment discovered. The blog article begins with how dynamic pricing is an enticing tool - and how sometimes it can be very useful. "But other times, its use is in a gray area."
Dynamic pricing is part of inventory management
Forbidden it is not. And it happens often. Or as they put it on the German blog, "In the age of big data, dynamic pricing is part of inventory management anyway."
Some retailers change their prices according to weather, vacations, competitive pricing, demand or personalized offers for repeat customers. Amazon changes its prices dozens of times a day. WalMart does this 50,000 times a month.
But what if you want your shop to emphasize customer friendliness? How do you defend the choice to give different customers different prices - depending on the channel they use?
Etailment found that German lens sellers Lensbest and Mister Spex sell their products at different prices. And they base those on whether consumers visit their sites directly or through Google Shopping.
Regular customers punished for their loyalty?
In other words:
Lensbest pays money for the people who visit the site through a Google Shopping ad. But those people pay less than direct visitors. And it's precisely those who are likely to return regularly - or already know the brand and know what it offers.
This means that regular customers are "punished" for their loyalty.
In the case of Mister Spex, the result was no different. Direct visitors had to pay much more than German customers who visited the store via Google. In Etailment's example, direct visitors had to pay 25.90€ for six pairs of lenses. While the Google Shopping visitors pay only 12.66€ for the same product.
Their point of view?
Mirco Caspar, co-managing director of Mister Spex, responded by saying that the company often gives attractive prices to their regular customers.
"In this case, we would like to win a new customer. In other cases, our regular customers benefit from promotions and offers they receive exclusively."
What about you?
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