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Amazon Wants to Haggle

marketingbooks.jpgDavid Streitfield in the LA Times (registration required, regrettably) notes a new experience for him at Amazon.com: books he adds to his shopping cart get more expensive if he doesn't buy them right away.

On Nov. 6, seeking to boost my dubious culinary skills, I decided to buy "The Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook." I went to Amazon and placed the book in my electronic shopping cart but got distracted and never finished the transaction.

The next day, I signed on to Amazon again. A pop-up message informed me that the price had increased from $11.02 to $11.53.

This seemed odd. In physical stores, prices of books are usually fixed, immune to fluctuation by season or whim. Indeed, they're one of the few consumer items that come with a printed price from the manufacturer.

Although the electronic world provides much greater latitude in pricing, as a longtime Amazon watcher I had never seen such an abrupt and unexplained price change. The cookbook, published two years ago by a regional press named Sasquatch Books, is decidedly obscure. Amazon's bestseller list gave it a ranking in the 18,000 neighborhood.

I checked with friends, who accessed their own Amazon accounts. They determined that the price was now $11.53 for them too. Was it conceivable that Amazon, seeing the only prospective customer in sight reaching for his wallet, decided to raise the price just a bit — enough to help its bottom line but not enough to scare him off?

Streitfield replicated his results with a bunch of obscure books, and sees nine of them increase in price a month later. He thinks Amazon is practicing dynamic pricing -- applying the principles of the stock market to the what's-in-stock market.

Of course, Streitfield's not the first to have noticed this phenomenon.

Amazon's response? "Prices change. Prices go up, prices go down."

We haven't noticed this ourselves. Then again, we're not prone to leaving books in our Amazon shopping cart for weeks on end. Anyone else out there run into this? If so, do you think it's corporate conspiracy or the natural vagaries of the marketplace?

Via Consumerist.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@seattlest.com with further questions, comments or tips.
By James in on January 3, 2007 10:55 AM

Comments [rss]

  • Jeremy M. Barker

    And another point--18,000 in sales is the polar opposite of obscure; that's huge in terms of the app. 3 million books on sale for the site. "Obscure" would describe things around a million; "reasonably obscure" maybe 100,000. If you're in the top 10K, you're making good money.

  • Pete

    Amazon and Dynamic Pricing? This is old news....

  • Seth

    "I don't want you to leave here today without the book of your dreams. You see that baby over there? Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals? Imagine how thrilled your mother-in-law will be when she sees it. You tell me--how much do you want to spend? Whoa! You are one tough negotiator! I can see I've met my match today. *I* want to sell you that book for $11.07, but I might get fired! You wouldn't want that, wouldya buddy? Let me...let me go talk to my manager, I'll see what he says. I'm on your side, buddy, I swear it."

  • This guy is a fucking whiner. Amazon discounts price below retail and the discount amount is always in flux. You dont like it, buy Steve Winwood related merchandise somewhere else, bro.

  • Being someone who used to use Amazon a lot (okay fine, I worked there) I was prone to using my cart as a wish list of sorts. I left all kinds of crap in there, and was notified every time I revisited it and the price of any item changed. It changed in both directions, and the prices on Amazon stuff was always in flux. Yes, bookstores do set one price and generally stick with it, or put it on sale. They don't usually go up at bookstores, but most bookstores don't discount their stock as much nor do they have the kind of hair-trigger sensitive supply-chain system that Amazon does (early on, that was going to be their big advantage). I'm not necessarily trying to say that everything going on in his Amazon cart is 100% innocent, but I'm not convinced it is as nefarious as Streitfield thinks. Especially since he used obscure books--if he put in something that sold better, he might actually see the prices change for the positive.

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