Hello, dynamic pricing.
Goodbye, price tags, hello dynamic pricing. This little piece of technology has been taken for granted. Almost every time you go to the store, that little piece has been fighting for you. Over the past ten years, companies have been silently trying to get rid of it, without you noticing. The scary part is that they are getting away with it. That is because a lot of people who grew up with the price tag just never realized how radical it was. Back in the eighteen hundreds, they would sell you a price they thought was important at the time. Like the length of time, if you look rich, or how you talked. If you did not like the price you would haggle. Which then started the one price system. Which changed how people shopped. It made it easier to compare prices of different stores, which made many stores go down on their prices to receive customers. Soon enough price tags were everywhere. Each of those stickers was a handshake. It represented an agreement,one price for every customer. But now that agreement is breaking.
With A.I. and automated surveillance corporations are turning shopping back into a game. You probably heard of dynamic prices, the reason Uber prices keep changing and flight costs jump up and down. It feels like we are constantly being taken advantage of. It can send concert ticket prices through the roof. Companies are using algorithms to instantly change prices based on demand, competition and what they know about their customers. These algorithms are in a race to identify what the highest price at which a sale could still be made, and customers are not exactly loving it. Price changes are the language of capitalism. It's how we talk to each other about supply and demand. In some ways, having these algorithms can both benefit the company and the customers. Which also started loyalty programs, installing the apps so they can get more information about you to know what to recommend. Giving them permission to track your geolocation, internet history and social media. This is the future of the price tags. A series of algorithms that study you, that stalk you, and try to squeeze everything out of your pocket. All of this can be fixed if we had a stronger government but we know that's not happening.