

Coming Soon: Toilet Paper Priced Like Airline Tickets - nightbrawler
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444914904577617333130724846.html

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bluetidepro
Maybe I'm the odd ball because I don't have a WSJ subscription (and maybe
everyone else does) but the pay wall for this is incredible annoying. I hardly
ever read the WSJ so it's not worth buying a subscription but at the same
time, I wouldn't mind reading an article here or there like this. It's a
crumby catch-22 situation.

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forgotAgain
I got through by googling "Toilet Paper Priced Like Airline Tickets", no
quotes. Many times, but not always, you can get to the full WSJ article if
you're coming from Google News.

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bluetidepro
Yup, that worked. Thanks for the tip! I really appreciate it!

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fsckin
Clicky just for fun:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Toilet+Paper+Priced+Like+Air...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Toilet+Paper+Priced+Like+Airline+Tickets)

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squarecat
There's an illuminating analogy using Being John Malkovich somewhere here...

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mseebach
Airline tickets are fairly unique in how they're not resellable, thus
arbitrage is very difficult. Toiletpaper and microwaves don't have this
problem.

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lignuist
Toilet paper is in some cases also not resellable.

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DigitalJack
I expect this will lead to some price fixing. The article mentioned Newegg and
BestBuy jumping up their price briefly by $100 or so. To me that sounds like
signaling. They are signaling that they are willing to raise prices by sending
up a flag.

If others find that agreeable, then they raise their price too. The desire to
be in the "buy box" drives prices down, but this kind of maneuver would act as
a reset mechanism.

As a counterpoint, the sheer number of competitors will help mitigate this.

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praptak
I have seen a shop display a lower price if you came from one of the price
comparison engines, a higher one if you searched the shop itself. Caveat
emptor.

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gmac
This is absolutely standard for financial products in the UK. The direct price
is often more than double the one you get via a price comparison.

For example, I just paid about £410 for one year's comprehensive car insurance
with Aviva, via a broker, via moneysupermarket.com. When I went to Aviva
direct they quoted me £950.

This makes some economic sense, but as a consumer I just hate it. It makes
apparently simple purchases really hard work. (In a similar vein, in the UK
it's often possible to save 50%+ on a long-distance train journey by buying a
number of tickets covering various parts of the journey, even if you're
staying on the same train throughout).

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praptak
> It makes apparently simple purchases really hard work.

Yup, that's the crux of the matter and it is on purpose. Pure market
segmentation as explained by Joel Spolsky[0]. They want to capture the surplus
from the <rich or lazy or inept> who can't or won't check the prices while
keeping the price-aware customers.

[0] Joel Spolsky:
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html)

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nodata
Coming soon: consumers avoiding shops with weird pricing!

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lignuist
I always tried to do this.

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jrockway
Why? I'd rather pay market price + x% rather than the constant $x where $x =
max(market price) + y% that "honest" retailers would give me.

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lignuist
Yes, it's most likely not rational, but to me it feels like being tricked, if
the price changes every few minutes. I prefer a little reliability.

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mef
Where's the trick? Retailers have always changed their prices for items over
time based on external factors, it's just happening faster now.

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lignuist
"it's just happening faster now" That's the point. Let's say I call a shop,
asking for a price of a product. They tell me a price of X, so I take amount X
with me and go to the shop, just to see that the price eventually has been
changed to Y (eventually higher than X). I'm missing reliability here. Sure,
prices are changing all the time. That's just normal, but i would prefer
stable prices for at least a time window that allows me to think about my
decision before i buy.

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jrockway
You are overthinking the purchase of toilet paper.

(It makes sense for Amazon to think about the price, they are going to sell it
thousands of times at that price. But you only buy a case of toilet paper once
a year, and it's going to cost you at most $30, so it's not really worth your
time to figure out how to save eighty cents.)

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lignuist
Maybe I'm overthinking it. Still: in the sum of all the purchases I do over
the year (obviously not only toilet paper), this 80 cents can make a
significant difference, if I have to invest the time only once, to find out,
how I can fix my behaviour and just follow that pattern afterwards.

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dredmorbius
The problem is that the way the game is rigged, you _can't_ decide only once.
You've got to consciously compare _every time you shop_.

The cognitive weight of that decision making is higher than a consistent and
satisficing heuristic (shop somewhere that doesn' tplay mindfuck with prices
and prices fairly).

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tantalor
> Sellers such as children's clothing store Cookie's use software to change
> prices every 15 minutes

Why does Amazon not provide this service to sellers? It seems similar to
bidding for keyword-based advertisement.

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akldfgj
Because Amazon prefers to reap the benefit themselves?

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forgotAgain
The article is good as far as it goes but it leaves out the use of consumer
tracking information by sellers. Vendors selling through Amazon might not have
that info but major retailers do.

