Hallo Liste,
eine besonders spannende Art der Preisgestaltung online
angebotener Waren, bzw. die Vermutung wie sich die
Preisgestaltung abspielen koennte, finden ihr in folgendem
Auszug aus dem aktuellen RISK-DIGEST.
<quote>
An interesting article appeared today on Wired's on-line site
(http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/17803.html). Apparently,
Buy.com made a mistake in its pricing of a Hitachi monitor and listed it
as
$164.50. This monitor was in fact $588.
So 48 hours later, and with 1600 monitors purchased, Buy.com has a
public
relations nightmare on its hands. The cost of this "typo" will be
around
$320,000 if Buy.com actually fulfills the order.
Aside from the obvious questions like, why they didn't notice a sudden
blow
up in orders for this monitor?, there is an interesting issue regarding
Buy.com's policy of being the lowest price on the net.
My understanding, and I could be wrong about this, is that Buy.com
actually
has (ro)bots (automated agents) roving the net looking for cheaper
prices.
If they find a cheaper price the price automatically gets dropped on
their
site. Even if the process isn't driven by a bot but by a human I think
the
risk is still valid...
Now I can't say for sure that this is what happened, but you can see the
obvious danger here. A retailer (that Buy.com competes with) somewhere
on
the net may have made its own mistake. The bot, not knowing any better,
would have carried that price back to Buy.com. The other alternative,
of
course, is that someone could maliciously have set the price low.
Either
way, the "price virus" gets transmitted by an ignorant bot back to
parent
site, and we're back to our public relations nightmare.
e-commerce... gotta love it...
</quote>
Einfach spannend ;-)
Gruesse
Ralf Stamporek
--
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/ OO \ Have a nice day and keep smiling!
< \__/ >
\____/ It takes only a moment to be kind;
but the results can last a lifetime
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