The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is focusing on personalised pricing practices, and planning to aggressively enforce laws requiring sellers to inform customers if they are being shown different prices from others.
The regulator defines personalised pricing as the “use of personal data to set prices according to the amount that a company believes an individual consumer is willing to spend.”
“Consumers expect prices for products and services to change based upon supply and demand, not their web surfing habits or buying history, the statement notes. Retailers who represent or imply that a price is static when it in fact varies by individual are at risk of misleading customers. Informed consumers might take measures to avoid higher personalized prices, such as using a virtual private network or private browsing session, or simply avoiding retailers engaged in personalized pricing altogether,” stated the official FTC post.
