Chapter 18: 3.5

The information age is changing the nature of pricing in several ways.

1. It's easier for consumers to compare prices using electronic/web-based informational searches, making consumer knowledge of price and market more substantive

2. It's also much more possible for consumers to obtain product from non-local suppliers via similar channels, making pricing competition much broader

3. Suppliers can benefit from pricing in the information age through such tactics as automatic renewals of subscriptions or memberships such as airport-kiosk web fees--these services might be purchased once by a harried consumer, who failed to read the renewal clause in the terms of agreement. This could allow the supplier to set a very low price for the initial purchase in expectation that the purchase would be automatically and unintentionally repeated.