Does Geo-location Affect The Price Of eCommerce Sites?

Nothing is surprising that online retailers change their prices throughout the day based on several factors such as the customer’s location, the previous history of the browser, or the computer’s operating system. What is happening in this situation is the question that needs to be answered. Throughout this article, we will look at the tactics that retail stores use to dish out different prices to customers and the steps you can take to determine if these tactics are targeting you.

It is important to note that prices are different between brick-and-mortar stores based on the store’s location. When shopping online, many people assume that everyone is getting the same deal, so they assume everyone is getting the same deal. There is no guarantee that this is the case, as it has been revealed that some retailers have implemented “dynamic pricing,” where the price changes depending on where the store is located.

A few years back, Amazon had already begun experimenting with dynamic pricing on DVDs. The company offers at least three different prices depending on the customer’s intent (a typical example is the Complete Second Season of the X-Files, which can be purchased for $89.99, $97.49, and $104.99). Amazon has finally bowed to pressure and stopped its practice in the wake of some backlash.

As a result of this development, dynamic pricing began to appear again in 2005. As a result of research conducted by the University of Pennsylvania, it was found that 70% of the people who participated in the survey did not know that retailers can change prices based on their customers’ purchasing patterns and provided a few examples of how they were able to do this. A recent study concluded that different types of government agencies received different prices from computer manufacturers based on whether they visited a price comparison site or not. A camera retailer is likely to offer a different price depending on whether or not the customer has come across a price comparison website.

In 2010, The magazine Slate interviewed a couple of the top programmers responsible for dynamic pricing to understand how widespread these practices have become.

Several anonymous computer scientists who build innovative websites for online retailers – with nondisclosure agreements to ensure some degree of anonymity – believe consumers should not be worried about getting different prices for the same items if there is a nondisclosure agreement in place. There has been a reported case where retailers have been known to redirect customers to other offers, products, or discounts based on their purchase history or cookies, assuming that the customer is a repeat customer..

Additionally, sometimes people will also have the opportunity to receive discounts from companies if they have a few items in their shopping cart – whether that be free shipping, a discount on additional items, or a coupon used in the future. There is no doubt that in the real world, retailers do this, especially when they are trying to gauge the market for specific types of products… Nonetheless, I think that today’s highly regarded retailers have evolved into much more sophisticated and subtle about how they go about getting the most out of their customers than in the past. Thus, it is now the time for innovation to take the place of price-tampering, which is the game’s name at the moment.

This phenomenon continues to be popular as ever, according to the Wall Street Journal, as it is just as popular now as it was when it first appeared:

A report in the New York Journal has recently brought to several light companies providing our products, such as Staples, Discover Financial Services, Rosetta Stone Inc, and Home Depot, regardless of where they are located, were manually updating price lists and displaying different product offers based on various characteristics, they had identified about consumers. In a Wall Street Journal article, it is reported that Office Depot has been using its customers’ browsing history and geolocation information to determine which products and offers are featured on its website to visitors.

This sort of discrimination is relatively simple: if one person is willing to pay top dollar for something, then it might mean that another person is willing to spend less. In this particular case, it was found that the customer’s Zip Code affected the pricing of the online retailers. It is important to note that the shipping cost does not depend on the average household income in the zip code; instead, it is based on the location of the average home in the zip code. Do you know if the average household income in your area differs from the average in other areas? Online retailers may charge you more for their products if that is the case.

In addition to zip codes and browser histories. Furthermore, you can set your operating system up to track your activity. According to The Wall Street Journal, some retailers offer discounts for people who shop on their mobile apps (or use their mobile websites) instead of their desktop websites. In addition to the Orbitz case, many other companies have been accused of charging higher prices to customers who shop on their Macs due to the higher average household income of Mac users compared to PC users.

Would you like to know if there is anything you can do to resolve this issue? The truth is, you can take several different courses of action. Indeed, there is not one of them that you have an easy time using.

Using your IP address and what you tell the retailer, they will be able to determine where you are at any given time. They can find out where you are by giving them your zip code. It is quite possible that if you live in a zip code that has a higher level of income, you may live in another zip code that has a lower income level, so if you live in a zip code like that, try entering a zip code near you that has a lower income level.

It depends on your needs as to whether you would like to conceal your IP address by setting up a proxy server or a VPN. Even though you should end up with a better deal when you change your IP address when browsing the web, at least you will be aware when the websites you visit change their prices.

One of the ways by which retailers track your spending habits is by using a browser cookie that is placed on your computer. If you would like this feature disabled, you can either turn on the ‘incognito’ or the ‘private’ mode in your browser or block cookies from third parties. A user who is especially concerned that deals might be negatively affected by dynamic pricing is advised to use one browser for shopping and another for buying, which adheres to the advice given by NBC Bay Area.

As obvious as this may seem, if you think you are being fooled by a website that uses dynamic pricing for no other purpose than to charge you more, your best bet is to shop somewhere else. In the past, we have walked you through the process of getting the best online deals, but in the case of this threat, it is all about finding offers that cross-reference each other.

Even though many retailers offer dynamic pricing to alter how much you pay, others do not. Doing a quick search on Google Shopping should allow you to find a better deal. In addition to that, you can also find deals on deal sites (like a few here) to take advantage of discounts and deals that you can take advantage of. If you have an Internet browser, it is possible to install an extension that will notify you when items (such as flights and hotels) are cheaper elsewhere (in this case, you can use Invisible Hand) on the Internet.

Geographic location is crucial to retailers, so you can also play a perfect game here. You can scrape the internet data on all eCommerce stores with different IP addresses/locations using this tool. In such a way, you will be able to get a holistic view of the pricing across all stores and then be able to make the most appropriate decision. It is important to keep in mind that this process is very time consuming and requires a huge amount of infrastructure. In fact, there is no need to be concerned, since ProxyCrawl’s Scraper API has you covered with its scalable infrastructure that ensures virtually no downtime, speeds as fast as light, and even enables a 2-minute integration process. What else could you possibly want?

Regardless of how effective a dynamic pricing strategy may be, it is still a relatively new technology in online shopping, and having one isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Depending on where you live, you may not live in a high-income zip code or state, in which case you may be getting the best deal, but if you do, you should shop around for the best price.

Scraper API by ProxyCrawl allows you to scale the internet data at scale without the hassle of infrastructure development and scalability costs. Additionally, it includes the most advanced features to ensure you do not get blocked, kicked out or banned.  There is also no setup requirement for beginners to use the service, and you can have a go through the free 1,000 requests in your dashboard.