Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Wed, 27 Jun 2012 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100813/09470310616/dailydirt-pricing-aint-easy.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100813/09470310616/dailydirt-pricing-aint-easy.shtml

JC Penny may be learning a tough economic lesson from its fair and square pricing strategy -- "shrouding" prices is a deeply-ingrained retail practice and consumers have adapted to it. Getting out of the brutal commodity clothing market is a hard, uphill battle... especially if you can't/don't offer customers truly unique products or services. [url]

Orbitz is admitting to sending Mac users to more expensive hotels (maybe not against their will). It's part of a pricing experiment based on data mining consumer behavior online -- Apple computer users tend to pay more for hotels, so why not show them the pricier hotels they're already looking for? [url]

An everyday example of price discrimination can be seen in a vending machine. When the cheap snacks sell out, people may pay more for late night victuals. [url]

The list price of college has been rising incredibly over the last decade, but not everyone pays full price. There's a growing gap between what the average student actually pays for college and what universities say tuition is. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100813/09470310616 Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:45:44 PDT Joseph Weisenthal http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070720/072808.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070720/072808.shtml quite a number of ownership changes. Last year, Orbitz' parent company was bought out by private equity firm Blackstone, which promptly decided to flip it back to the public markets. When it first filed to go public, there were many who argued that the company looked like a terrible investment for both operational and structural reasons. It looks like the market agrees with that assessment, as the IPO ended up pricing below its expected range. Private equity firms aren't infallible, and sometimes they're bound to buy companies that they can't turn into very much. But as more of these unimpressive offerings come to market, there's going to be increased skepticism over whether these firms can apply their magic touch to the tech industry.

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