This is scientific American 60 Second Science.

I'm Christopher in D'Alga.

Got a minute?

If you were to walk into a brick and mortar store

and they were offering better prices for less affluent people, there would be a revolt, right?

No one would stand for this.

Christo Wilson, a computer scientist at Northeastern University, but on the internet, he says, anything goes when it comes to pricing.

It is super subjective.

Everything can be personalized.

Wilson and his colleagues analyze just how personal online shopping can get.

They compared the search results of 300 real world users

to searches by cookie-free fake accounts

on 16 major e-commerce sites.

Turns out half the sites personalized search results,

based on who was searching.

Especially travel sites.

Expedia and Hotels.com prioritized more expensive hotels for certain users and price lines skewed

search results based on past purchases.

But Wilson's favorite example of variable online pricing was Home Depot.com, where shoppers on mobile devices tend to be offered much more

expensive items.

You know, it's like you want on your desktop and search for a table and they give you a plastic

folding table. But you search from your phone and they give you a mahogany dining room table.

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