Case Situation:
From the customer's perspective, the most often asked question is "where can we get the best price?" in the response to the question came "shopping bots" These software agents search through million online sites to find the best prices. The more popular shopping bots include Bizrate, mySimon, Nextag, PriceGrabber.com, PriceScan.com, and Shopping.com. these sites do a fine job providing the potential buyer with comparative price information. But what about sellers? How do they know if the online selling prices they feature are competitive? Are they prices too high? Too low? How can these online sellers manage their pricing ? the answer of course, is "pricing bot". Pricing bot are software agents that adjust pricing automatically for the seller in response to changing market conditions. For example, suppose Barnes & Noble (B&N) at their own site (www.barnesandnoble.com) wishes to price the current top 10 cover and paperback fiction and nonfiction best sellers, at 10 cents below the price quoted by Amazon.com. thousand of times a day B&N pricing bot would search each title at Amazon.com, record the competitor's pricing and adjust B&N's prices automatically.
Required to do:
Problem 1: What do you think about this type of pricing setting- technology? Do you see it as a help or hindrance to the seller? To the buyer.
Problem 2: What type of pricing strategy would a company be employing if it used a pricing bot to adjust prices to always have the lowest price on any given product?