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Comment by dmfdmf | Hacker News Reader

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dmfdmf·

In Econ, the latter is called differential pricing and there is nothing evil about it at all.

http://www.pricingforprofit.com/pricing-explained/differenti...

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That depends on your moral code, of course.

Which in turn depends on your view of Man.

We knew that _downward_ differential pricing worked (in terms of increasing conversions) - a popup saying "Hi, you're a return visitor to our website, we can discount this room rate 10% if you book today) always increased conversions.

We sure as hell _experimented_ to see if the decrease in conversions by bumping margins (and hence prices) up was worthwhile in terms of total profit.

I'd happily make an argument that if the first is morally "OK" then so is the second…

Your phrasing here suggests that you work for orbitz or a similar company. Is that accurate?

Same field, but not since 2008. I was doing this in early 2001.

a popup saying "Hi, you're a return visitor to our website, we can discount this room rate 10% if you book today" always increased conversions.

Did you also test a popup saying "Hi, you're a first-time visitor to our website, we can discount this room rate 10% if you book today"? :)

It't NOT differential pricing, that would be offering the same product top Mac users for more money.

They are instead offerent more expensive hotels to Mac users - on the reasonable assumption that Mac owners are higher spenders compared to somebody connecting from a free PC in a public library.

I presume you were downvoted because the responder specifically referred to the "latter" description: "or are they showing the exact same offers but with the prices raised".

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