This article evokes a conference entitled, "The Internet and the Twenty-First Century Firm," sponsored by Wharton's Reginald H. Jones Center and IBM's Institute for Knowledge Management.
Participants talked about intellectual property, privatization of the Internet or marketing. And the possibilities of fine-tune pricings.
Path-dependent pricing is another strategy that Eric Clemons, professor of operations and information management said might also be called, "Never give a sucker an even break." Marketers tracking Web activities with cookies use this strategy to practice price differentiation. He suggested an experiment: Place two computers next to one another. On one computer, surf sites that indicate cheapness. On the other, log in to Forbes.com. Then turn each computer to an online travel company and order a ticket to the Cayman Islands.
He predicted the computer that surfed cheap sites will get one price. The other, he said, will get a much higher price.
I tried this approach with my computers and some french travel companies. I received the same prices.
Perhaps you're having better cookies in the U.S. than in France.
Source: Knowledge@Wharton, Special to CNET News.com, Apr. 28, 2002
Boy, I liked this one.
In Santiago de Chile, 800 of the city's 1,800 traffic lights went haywire after thieves stole 15 PCs and 2 servers from the Unidad Operativa de Control de Tránsito ( UOCT), the office that manages the traffic flow of the city.
Without the computer system, the traffic lights continued working but at their own pace, losing all synchronization between one crossroad and the others. Five million citizens were in fear of crossing the streets, whether on foot or by car.
The thieves paralyzed a city of several million people for about $90,000.
In a way, that's an amazing ROI.
Source: Ricardo Sametband, Wired News, Apr. 26, 2002
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