Revisiting digital mediated shopping
Here we are again
I will add to this, but it appears that new tools on both sides of the marketplace are emerging both for shoppers to get better deals and for shops to screw over their customers.
Back in 2013 I looked at an area of work for a “data locker” product for Telefonica. Big data but for the masses, what would make sense. Tiny data, maybe?
The shopper tool here showing how a use would set their Tiny Data, or allow the tool to scrape their receipts in their inbox to do it for them. It could include shoe sizes, spectacle prescriptions, clothing measurements.
On visiting a shopping site, the tool should be able to find voucher codes and offers not normally visible on the store visit.
And do some pre-fetch filtering on each item, based on the sizes actually available. And finally, make sure you are not being over charged for practically identical items available elsewhere.
I also looked at the whole space around digital retail in physical shops. It does look like some of that stuff is appearing in the mainstream, with individual pricing on e-ink price labels in store.
This is often sold as keener pricing for members (which may or may not turn out to be illegal) but I think we can all be pretty sure this will actually be used to squeeze the maximum any individual will pay for any particular item, as well as misleading “special offers”. Normal shoppers are going to need better, faster tools to reveal deep price history and market comparison, in realtime, in the real world as well as online.
More to follow, in the light of dupe.com and the ramping up of an asymettrical information war between shoppers and capitalism. That’s not a marketplace, if you cannot discover pricing and are being fooled into non-bargains.
Users need new weapons.
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