12-23-2012, 09:47 PM
Oh, the tangled web we weave with all that information, eh?
I'm so gullible, I had never even thought of this!
So, when you live way out in the boonies, there's no competition, so they stick it
to ya.
From the Wall Street Journal:
By JENNIFER VALENTINO-DEVRIES, JEREMY SINGER-VINE and ASHKAN SOLTANI
It was the same Swingline stapler, on the same Staples.com website. But for Kim Wamble, the price was $15.79, while the price on Trude Frizzell's screen, just a few miles away, was $14.29.
A key difference: where Staples seemed to think they were located.
A Wall Street Journal investigation found that the Staples Inc. website displays different prices to people after estimating their locations. More than that, Staples appeared to consider the person's distance from a rival brick-and-mortar store, either OfficeMax Inc or Office Depot Inc. If rival stores were within 20 miles or so, Staples.com usually showed a discounted price.
"How can they get away with that?" said Ms. Frizzell, who works in Bergheim, Texas.
In retail competition with its rivals—the Journal's testing also showed that areas that tended to see the discounted prices had a higher average income than areas that tended to see higher prices.
Presented with the Journal's findings, Staples acknowledged that it varies its online and in-store prices by geography because of "a variety of factors" including "costs of doing business."
For years, the Internet, with its promise of quick comparison shopping, has granted people a certain power over retailers. At the click of a button, shoppers could find a better deal elsewhere, no travel required.
But the idea of an unbiased, impersonal Internet is fast giving way to an online world that, in reality, is increasingly tailored and targeted. Websites are adopting techniques to glean information about visitors to their sites, in real time, and then deliver different versions of the Web to different people. Prices change, products get swapped out, wording is modified, and there is little way for the typical website user to spot it when it happens.
Rest of Article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...81534.html
I'm so gullible, I had never even thought of this!
So, when you live way out in the boonies, there's no competition, so they stick it
to ya.
From the Wall Street Journal:
By JENNIFER VALENTINO-DEVRIES, JEREMY SINGER-VINE and ASHKAN SOLTANI
It was the same Swingline stapler, on the same Staples.com website. But for Kim Wamble, the price was $15.79, while the price on Trude Frizzell's screen, just a few miles away, was $14.29.
A key difference: where Staples seemed to think they were located.
A Wall Street Journal investigation found that the Staples Inc. website displays different prices to people after estimating their locations. More than that, Staples appeared to consider the person's distance from a rival brick-and-mortar store, either OfficeMax Inc or Office Depot Inc. If rival stores were within 20 miles or so, Staples.com usually showed a discounted price.
"How can they get away with that?" said Ms. Frizzell, who works in Bergheim, Texas.
In retail competition with its rivals—the Journal's testing also showed that areas that tended to see the discounted prices had a higher average income than areas that tended to see higher prices.
Presented with the Journal's findings, Staples acknowledged that it varies its online and in-store prices by geography because of "a variety of factors" including "costs of doing business."
For years, the Internet, with its promise of quick comparison shopping, has granted people a certain power over retailers. At the click of a button, shoppers could find a better deal elsewhere, no travel required.
But the idea of an unbiased, impersonal Internet is fast giving way to an online world that, in reality, is increasingly tailored and targeted. Websites are adopting techniques to glean information about visitors to their sites, in real time, and then deliver different versions of the Web to different people. Prices change, products get swapped out, wording is modified, and there is little way for the typical website user to spot it when it happens.
Rest of Article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...81534.html
