Dynamic Pricing: Who Profits?
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 606 Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2026
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Everyone wants to get the best price they can when they buy, whether that’s a product, a service or an experience. But the ‘best price’ can look different for different people, and at different times.
Surge pricing, tiered prices, off-peak discounts, time-of-use pricing- technology has enabled more industries to employ dynamic pricing to get the best prices for their products by altering them depending on a range of sophisticated considerations.
But this has made pricing less predictable and left customers feeling like the prices are often stacked against them; most notably after the Oasis reunion tour ticket sales in 2024.
Is dynamic pricing really as bad as we all think? Evan and guests look at the psychology behind consumer perceptions of dynamic pricing, and ask how different industries can utilise the pricing model to benefit themselves and their customers.
Guests: Richard Howle, founder of RH Insights Zoisa North-Bond, CEO of Octopus Energy for Business Marco Bertini, Professor of Marketing at Esade Business School
Production team: Presenter: Evan Davis Producer: Mhairi MacKenzie Production Co-ordinator: Katie Morrison Sound engineers: Daniel Fox and Steve Greenwood Editor: Matt Willis
The Bottom Line is produced in partnership with The Open University
Transcript
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| 0:55.5 | Hello again. Thank you for listening to the bottom line. And we're here every week and on Radio 4. This week we'll be talking about dynamic pricing. Before we get to that, though, quick plug for a recent episode on cyber attacks, where we looked at what really happened when cybercriminals hold a business to ransom. I spoke to the former head of IT security |
| 1:01.2 | at Royal Mail about the major attack that company suffered in 2023, and we heard from a cyber security |
| 1:08.8 | expert about how to negotiate with hackers. |
| 1:12.1 | Anyway, let's get to the main event. |
| 1:13.8 | Trains, planes, taxis, car rental hotels, theatre and concert tickets, not to mention sometimes, |
| 1:19.6 | electricity and even e-commerce, all sectors where you do not expect there to be a single |
| 1:26.0 | static price for each product line. Instead, prices vary, |
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