Everything costs more because the algorithm says so: Tariffs and inflation dominate headlines, but personalized pricing is the real affordability crisis
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Our day-to-day navigation of prices rests on a comforting illusion—that we all encounter the same marketplace. In reality, this is happening less often. Firms have always had the right to set prices, but that process has become continuous and individualized: a ceaseless micro-calculation of how much you personally might be willing to pay for something. In a way, we’re all participating in an ongoing pricing experiment. And, like the best subjects, we barely realize it.
This new marketplace emerged, in part, because the tools to reshape it became cheaper, faster, and ubiquitous. For firms, price personalization—or discrimination—no longer requires building a proprietary system; it can be purchased off the shelf.
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Here’s how it works. Companies gather data from many routine digital touchpoints: web and app tracking (cookies, pixels, and device fingerprinting), geolocation from phones and browsers, and in-store sensors. Also involved are data brokers who sell detailed consumer profiles combining demographics, purchase histories, and online behaviour. After the initial lure with attractive benefits and promises of discounts, (“the hook”), you’re handed over to a surveillance infrastructure that mines data about your behaviour and willingness to pay (“the hack”) and then raises fees, cuts rewards, and traps you in the program by making cancellation difficult (“the hike”).
In theory, algorithms can offer discounts to price-sensitive shoppers too. But this isn’t necessarily what happens. AI-fuelled price setting can quietly steer those with the least power to shop around to higher prices and poorer quality goods, thereby deepening the burden on low-income households. When apps can infer when it’s your payday, what neighbourhood you live in, and aggregate your past purchasing habits, they can raise prices to your presumed desperation. For hard-up households or lone parents, that means a personalized penalty on being broke or time starved.
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For generations, we built guardrails around how sellers could charge buyers. But those rules were written for human decision makers not self-learning software. They were meant for a world of price tags and weekly flyers not millisecond-fast adjustments and invisible markups. Pricing systems, not tariffs or inflation, are fast becoming the real cost of living.
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While I don't doubt this is happening online, as someone who has used Walmart's digital price tags from the worker side, those suckers take minutes to update their displays. There is no way they're showing different prices to different shoppers (at least with the current tech).
PC optimum I think is the biggest offender of the major grocery chains doing this. They set a high base price, then put member-exclusive loss-leaders to draw them in, then use the app where you have to "register" specific discounts that are applied when you check out. I have no doubt that Loblaws is messing with prices for each individual consumer to see what they can skim off of each. I don't shop there, this is what I gleaned off my parents using it.
Pricing systems, not tariffs or inflation, are fast becoming the real cost of living.
lol. This article is poorly written and transparent ragebait, without even the most basic grounding in economics.
edit: which is not to say the opinion is wrong, per se, but it is not grounded in a firm understanding of the topics the author wants to discuss.
Ah yes, if we end personalized pricing there will magically be enough crude oil
K, so... I believe þis, in principle. I have no doubt some companies are doing þis. However:
- None of the stores I shop at have digital price tags, so it can't be happening to me þere, and
- I generally check Amazon process against oþer vendors and, when possible, order elsewhere. Almost always, Amazon is þe same price and is often cheaper.
If it's happening online, þere's eiþer a remarkable amount of collaboration between various vendors and manufacturers, or it's happening in venues I'm simply never exposed to.
While I have no doubt companies are eager to do þis and some must be already doing it, I'm personally seeing no evidence of it, so it's difficult for me to accept þe premise þat it's not tariffs, but only algorithmic pricing.
Silver lining: if the algorithm can tell that same economy means I've been unemployed for over half a year and on the verge of bankruptcy and adjusts the prices accordingly to make it dirt cheap, I'll take it, I guess. Buut my little pinky says it's not going to happen.
That doesn't make sense. The tech bros have been saying for decades that all this data harvesting and surveillance will be used to improve lives.
The reason this is happening now is because of concentration of wealth. There's no threat of the business owner loosing all their wealth if their business fails [from raising prices] because they have so much wealth. So they can raise prices, winking and nodding to thier competition all the way.
...at least fictional Cyberpunk dystopias looked cool.
Companies gather data from many routine digital touchpoints: web and app tracking (cookies, pixels, and device fingerprinting), geolocation from phones and browsers, and in-store sensors.
I understand that collecting data from the browser and apps can change the price for items we typically order online. But the article mention groceries and fuel, aren't those items typically bought in a store? How does my browsing have any impact on what I pay for a piece of bread?
I feel like market economics doesn't work well even in theory if sellers can heavily individualise pricing. Anyone got anything concrete on that?
People need to use privacy respecting apps when possible. Easy changes include switching from Google to DuckDuckGo or Chrome to Firefox/Brave. Use a VPN. See more at Privacy Guides
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