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The Rise Of Identity-Based Pricing

Dynamic pricing doesn't just take the business and its competitors' margins into account. Online commerce sites are also experimenting with identification-based pricing, which prices items based on what is known about the customer, such as their buying history and browsing behavior. This can have both good and bad implications for the shopper.

On the plus side, if a site recognizes that this is the umpteenth time the same customer has window shopped for a particular item, an algorithm may try a lower price, just for that customer, to see if that will close the sale.

But if the site notices the customer has a history of buying high-priced items, it might presume they're willing to pay more for a given item and offer higher prices or more expensive choices, as Mac-using Orbitz customers learned to their dismay this summer.

Using identification-based pricing carries risks for retailers, too. A 2004 article in the Journal of Interactive Marketing looked at very early executions of the strategy...and concluded that consumers trusted price changes made by an ecommerce website when it was done based on timing or other business-related reasons, because that was perceived as fair and understood as the way businesses work. But when it came to the identity of the consumer affecting prices, shoppers quickly became uncomfortable. (my emphasis)

But given today's emphasis on mobile transactions and personalized shopping - not to mention increasing online competition and margin pressures - identity-based pricing isn't likely to go away. Look for more and more retailers to gradually expand dynamic pricing criteria beyond timing and inventory to who is the customer. It won't make privacy advocates happy, and it could scare off shoppers in the long run, but in the current economy, it will be hard for e-tailers to resist anything that boosts profits right away.

If it takes three contacts to establish a rapport in person, it probably takes at least seven contacts online — and some strategists suggest that it really takes as many as 21 before the typical online relationship turns transactional. Whatever the number, there are some protocols that need to be understood, especially if you are pitching yourself to media contacts.

personally, the new math she uses to estimate how many times a suitor must earn her attention before asking to stay over feels a little too rounded to me, but she has a point. one piece of advice for the writer: email filters will remove the most egregious of the offenders....

image:  Some rights reserved by Bill McIntyre

here's the money shot from the 8/29 adweek article: the pinterest express seems to have been shunted to a local. wondering why buzzfeed, which claims "more than 200 publishers like The Huffington Post, TMZ, and The Daily Beast," is at such odds with shareaholic's "more than 200,000 publishers that reach more than 260 million unique monthly visitors each month" - oh wait, maybe that's why.

For many publishers, Pinterest falls flat

At Pinterest's peak in April 2012, the photo-centric social site was churning out nearly 400,000 social referrals. In July, Pinterest served up only 114,000 referrals (virtually unchanged from 110,000 in June), illustrating that for many publishers, Pinterest may be more of a social gimmick than anything else. Others have explored this phenomenon recently, noting that Pinterest isn't naturally aligned with the newsgathering operations of many publishers, though lifestyle sites like Brides.com are having excellent success with the site. Things aren't all gloomy for Pinterest though. The site has seen a 200 percent increase in referral traffic throughout its first full year of public operation.

two restaurants, one with a 3.74 rating and one with 3.76 rating, are similar in actual equality, but because they’ll get rated by yelp 3.5 and 4.0 respectively, could receive dramatically different reservation rates.

image:  Some rights reserved http://www.flickr.com/photos/yakobusan/

Evans also noted that like businesses, attorneys should offer something of value to their Facebook fans — something to keep them coming back. He offered the example of some kind of contest or aligning with a cause that people believe in. Evans also wrote about the power of Facebook ads. He detailed that he tried both Facebook ads and Google AdWords, and got better value from the former. Attorneys should be smart about ads that will connect with their targeted demographic and entice people to join the cause.

image:  Some rights reserved by peggydavis66

facebook has introduced targeting options for posts to any page with 5,000 or more fans. probably not an immediate option for most SMB page owners, but hopefully the water will run downhill. let's call it aspiration for now... :)

If your page has more than 5,000 likes, here’s what the new feature looks like:

Page administrators can choose to target news feeds of specific types of user, based on categories such as gender, age, relationship status, education, interests, location and language. This does not affect what kinds of posts users will see when they visit the page (all of them), but rather which posts will show up in users’ news feeds.

I've been leery of "high-visual" services like pinterest and instagram for not-so-visual clients, but this article on the convince and convert blog ofers up a few ideas outside the bridal boutique and housewares commercial applications I've seen everywhere else. here's one tip:

2. Create a Pinterest Newsroom

If you are pinning one press release, why not create a corporate newsroom pinboard to showcase it, along with your other media/news assets? It can mirror your website’s newsroom, or enhance it with fresh material. Here is a great example from Cisco.

In addition to press releases and infographics, your newsroom pinboard can include news clips, company blog posts, short pitches or expert opinion comments, video – even executive headshots and logos. Just make sure that anything pinned to your newsroom is legible enough to entice clicks, properly trademarked and approved for public use.

Another powerful media tool is an executive staff pinboard, which links headshot photos to biographies, bylined articles and other content that demonstrates their credibility as an expert resource.

When you quote them in a press release, try linking their name directly to their pinboard for added oomph.

interesting perspective from larry downes on the HBR blog today about the ongoing controversy about what the internet knows about us and to what uses it puts that information. downes makes the valid point that the biggest players are too big to care about your naughty pictures or marital infidelity - you count only as another data point to feed the great ad rate setter in the cloud. 

my take: at the intersection of anonymity and personalization, you will find me with a 5 gallon tub of ny super fudge chunk. but while they might not care, I care who else they show it to in some paid attempt to get that person to buy it...

Right now, my Facebook page is showing me photos of three people "you may know." I know all three. For two, the connection is obvious. For the third, the connection is eerily indirect. Until I understood what mundane data elements connected all three to me, I felt uneasy about Facebook. The company seemed to be an actual person, and a creepy one at that.

As we record more information in digital form in hopes of sharing it with our intimate contacts and less enthusiastically with advertisers who pay for the services we love, it's inevitable that more of these visceral responses will occur. When specific data is used in novel ways, the initial response is often the creepy factor.

The creepy factor, however, is the response to a novel use of information to provide a seemingly personalized response. Over time, the creepiness decreases. Most of us are now accustomed to customized Google search results, specific Gmail ads, and prescient Facebook recommendations. They no longer make our skin crawl.

In response to innovation in customer intelligence, however, privacy advocates are calling for all sorts of new laws to protect us from ourselves. In reality, what they want most is a placebo to cure the creepy factor.

image:  Some rights reserved by Tobias Leeger