The future of Shopping
JAMES PLUNKETT
I
magine strolling with a neighbour to the corner shop, only to be charged 50p more than her for buying the same box of cornflakes. You’d better get used to that feeling of unfairness because “price discrimination” could be a big part of the future of retail. In fact, it’s already here. On some websites, online prices now bounce up and down in ways that are specific to you—depending on what you’ve bought before, what you paid for it, and even what you’ve previously browsed and not bought. Big data, the cascade of digital traces we all leave in the networked age, allows firms to gather information on customers, and they can use that information to figure out, with unprecedented accuracy, how much we’re each willing to pay—and, therefore, the maximum they can charge.