Should dynamic pricing be regulated?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 31 January 2024
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the second part of the series, in the second part of the series, we look at supermarkets and restaurants.
Dynamic pricing it could help cut down on food waste, but would it favour people who can choose when they shop? And we ask why restaurant-goers have yet to develop a taste for it.
We also find out how artists like Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift have experimented with dynamic pricing to set the prices for their concerts.
Finally, we ask if dynamic pricing needs to be regulated more strictly. Is it fair? Does it allow companies to get away with price-gouging? We speak to the head of a consumer rights group who says that more transparency is needed to protect shoppers.
Produced and presented by Gideon Long
(Image: A food market in the US. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Una Chaplin and I'm the host of a new podcast called Hollywood Exiles. |
| 0:05.7 | It tells the story of how my grandfather, Charlie Chaplin, and many others, were caught up in a campaign to root out communism in Hollywood. |
| 0:15.3 | Hollywood Exiles from CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:23.8 | Hello, I'm Gideon Long and welcome to Business Daily, |
| 0:27.0 | where once again we're looking at dynamic pricing. |
| 0:30.4 | On yesterday's program, we heard how it's transformed the travel industry, |
| 0:34.3 | from airlines to Uber to the Indian Railways. |
| 0:39.4 | And I spoke to Harmon International, |
| 0:44.8 | a US-based electronics company that's boosted its business by implementing dynamic pricing. |
| 0:50.7 | Today, we're looking at concert tickets, how the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift set prices for their shows. We'll also look at supermarkets where the technology is just |
| 0:55.5 | taking hold. And we'll ask why restaurant goers don't seem to have acquired a taste for dynamic |
| 1:01.4 | pricing. It could be potentially a financial disaster for a restaurant that started using |
| 1:06.4 | dynamic pricing if it wasn't implemented in the right way. What we have is several indicators that consumers |
| 1:13.1 | really don't like dynamic pricing. They view it as unethical and inconvenient. That's all coming up |
| 1:19.0 | on Business Daily, here on the BBC World Service. |
| 1:35.7 | 2020 was a big year for Bruce Springsteen, who went back on the road for the first time in six years. |
| 1:42.1 | Meanwhile, Taylor Swift's ERAs tour became the highest grossing tour of all time. |
| 1:47.7 | Artists like Springsteen and Swift have long grappled with the best way to price tickets for their shows. |
| 1:48.9 | The problem they face is this. |
| 1:51.0 | If they set prices too high, they open themselves up to the accusation that they're |
| 1:55.3 | taking advantage of their loyal fans. |
| 1:57.9 | But if they set them too low, then ticket touts or scalpers, buy up the tickets and sell |
... |
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