pricing, e-commerceI frequently use price monitoring tools like PriceSpy to check the average price of consumer products and to send me a notification when the price drops below a certain price floor.
There seems to be a quite common occurance that prices of some products are adjusted almost daily, often by less than a $ USD/£ GBP. I would assume that these small changes are due to adjustments to foreign currencies.
I have also noticed that when a unit of a product is sold, this sometimes seems to affect the price, by larger percentage changes. I have seen both price drops and price increases in the price after I have made an online purchase of that very product. This may be due to supply/demand considerations.
This has made me wonder if online retailing platforms today utilize ‘automated’ (or “robotic”) price-setting algorithms. These retailers stock a large amount of products, so I’m having a hard time believing the price-setting is completely manual.
There is also the possibility that price changes are made in reflection to the prices that competitors are putting to market, but that may or may not be automated.
It wouldn’t surprise me if major players like Amazon use such things, in fact I’m assuming they do. But do e-commerce platforms for mid-to-small-range online retailing enterprises utilize such tools? If so, what are some examples of e-commerce platforms that offer such features?
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