Personalised pricing is exploitative. It's also inefficient, with resources wasted on both sides. Historically, it's the difference between posted prices in a store and haggling in a market square. There are good reasons why people prefer stores most of the time @pluralistichttps://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/
@johnquiggin@pluralistic haggling, except the seller knows to within a few dollars how much you have in your wallet, has a fairly good guess about your plans for the day, and a detailed history of what you've paid in the past for similar items. Also, the seller knows what price every one of their competitors is asking.
Also? Haggling is a two-way interaction. In haggling you have an opportunity to explain WHY you won't pay more than X, even if you will actually pay X + Y.
FWIW? I hate haggling. But I've also been to places in the world where haggling is something you are expected to do. I've pissed people off by simply accepting the first-offered price! 😕
Once in China I even had a bystander step in and haggle for me. Didn't even ask permission, just did it. Epic!
@jackwilliambell@stealthisbook@johnquiggin@pluralistic I've figured out that haggling is about relationships. You're not asking for the best price, you're asking "how much do you like me vs how much do I like you". So much of the haggling I hear goes like "just give me any price that you think is fair" and "nono I would never give you a price that won't make you a profit, but you'll make a profit with $X".
The point is to have a repeat customer and to know to go back again. Paying the "full amount" likely means that as a customer, you're not interested in going back.
@bakuninboys@jackwilliambell@johnquiggin@pluralistic though, there's a certain leverage in being the onetime customer who will absolutely walk away from the transaction. They have the most leverage in the relationship since they haven't given anything to the other side.
In fact, I'd expect the most revenue from any given seller to be from onetime customers because they don't know how much something usually costs.
As I said, both sides can waste resources on this. If the seller posts a price and makes it clear that bargaining is not an option (supermarkets, for example), these costs are avoided.
@johnquiggin@stealthisbook@jackwilliambell@pluralistic I'm taking more of a David Graeber angle on this, in the context of haggling. The point of haggling is to bring in the intangibles of acquaintance to the tangibles of something being sold. The relationship is "worth" far more than a few dollars here or there. It might mean someone who comes in and has a chat over tea on a slow day. You can only think of "waste" if the only thing you consider is the money, but you can't buy an acquaintance. Someone you know and someone who knows you. Someone who can do you small favours, someone who can offer expertise or knows someone who can solve your problems.
"Haggling" isn't about the money. The communities which do it are strengthening their bonds. The money is kind of a toy. I just think this isn't very well understood in the west.
FWIW: Up-thread I was saying – without ACTUALLY saying – the computer-mediated price twiddling @pluralistic was speaking of was not haggling, because haggling requires two parties interacting and the price twiddling was one party acting unilaterally; with the aid of information they know about the buyer.
A better term for that is 'arbitrage', where a seller relies on secret information.