The price is right! Amazon targets the right price to the right user and you do not know.

Consumers are getting an incomplete picture of online prices because of overwhelming information and ad hoc prices because of time, behavior, or even age.

At first, e-commerce would lead to price transparency for consumers and force retailers to compete in a profitability-killing race for low prices. But actually, technology has been developed to improve vendors' revenues.?

Have you felt you don’t have any idea whether prices are going up or down? We all feel obfuscated because of all the changing prices and online options. Here are what companies use to make us believe we are making a good purchase.?

1. Overwhelming visuals: Online marketing is using more images and nice descriptions to reduce price exposure. Sometimes the visuals and information are so overwhelming that price is not a dealbreaker.?
2. Few items left:? Companies show scarcity of some products, increasing the urgency to buy soon, making it more difficult to compare other options or wait for another time.??
3. Complicate the math: Discounts, coupons, and similar products comparison create anchor pricing, so consumers believe that this price is ok but they are not comparing within the same ecosystem products.?
4. Prices change to each individual: Companies discriminate prices to each type of consumer, users with historic high-ticket purchases see higher prices than those users more sensitive to prices. The algorithm is so complex that prices change even moments apart.?
5. Looks easy to buy: eCommerce reduces the psychological pain of paying. Saving the credit card information, or buying with a click reduces all frictions in the user journey making users lose awareness of their spending.

Those techniques are migrating to brick-and-mortar stores. Whole Foods, purchased by Amazon for $13 billion, is the first big experiment. Hundreds of cameras with a god’s-eye-sensor monitor every consumer behavior in the store, itemize the products and charge without going to any cashier.?

The next trend will be to use technology for giving purchase power to consumers, improving price and quality transparency, and reducing shady companies’ strategies.

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