About a month ago
Yahoo carried a
Reuters news report about the uncovering of Amazon.com's
pricing experiment. Amazon Chief Executive
Jeff Bezos apologised for a random price test in which the price quoted for certain
DVD's was randomised in order to test the relationship between pricing and sales.The scheme, which was apparently trialed for five days, was discovered after an
Amazon.com customer discovered that the price displayed for a certain DVD dropped after he removed the Amazon.com
cookie from his
PC. Amazon.com have since refunded money to all those who payed more than the
baseline price for
merchandise during the
experiment.
Whilst I do not condone such a policy, it has caused me to question whether Amazon.com is conducting business any differently to, say, a petrol company whose price for a gallon of petrol is adjusted from one petrol station to the next, depending on factors such as proximity to competitors, whether the petrol station is at a motorway service site, how affluent the neighbourhood where the petrol station is situated is, and so on.
Is it possible that Amazon.com are exploiting customer loyalty by attempting to charge a slightly higher price to those customers who have previously purchased items from them? Perhaps.
Is this price-adjustment morally or legally wrong? Surely, the onus is on the buyer to establish that they are getting a good deal when they purchase goods, whether online or elsewhere? By not researching alternative sources, the customer is sacrificing value for convenience.
I guess that with their current revenue/profit trend, Amazon.com need to look at creative ways of maximising profitability!