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Article
Does everyone have a price? Understanding people’s attitude towards online and offline price discrimination
Internet Policy Review (2019)
  • Joost Poort, University of Amsterdam
  • Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius, Radboud University Nijmegen
Abstract
Online stores can present a different price to each customer. Such algorithmic personalised pricing can lead to advanced forms of price discrimination based on the characteristics and behaviour of individual consumers. We conducted two consumer surveys among a representative sample of the Dutch population (N=1233 and N=1202), to analyse consumer attitudes towards a list of examples of price discrimination and dynamic pricing. A vast majority finds online price discrimination unfair and unacceptable, and thinks it should be banned. However, some pricing strategies that have been used by companies for decades are almost equally unpopular. We analyse the results to better understand why people dislike many types of price discrimination.
Keywords
  • Price discrimination,
  • Personalised pricing,
  • Dynamic pricing,
  • Algorithmic pricing,
  • Data protection,
  • Data protection law
Disciplines
Publication Date
January 30, 2019
DOI
10.14763/2019.1.1383
Citation Information
Joost Poort and Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius. "Does everyone have a price? Understanding people’s attitude towards online and offline price discrimination" Internet Policy Review Vol. 8 Iss. 1 (2019) ISSN: 2197-6775
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/frederik-zuiderveenborgesius/10/