Completely solving the problem of pricing in term of getting it right the first time is more difficult than predicting the weather. At least with the weather yo

Completely solving the problem of pricing in term of getting it right the first time is more difficult than predicting the weather. At least with the weather you can go outside and learn if it is raining. You can't just go outside look at an item and give it an optimal price that maximizes the amount and/or the amount of time you need to sell it within. I work at a company that has pricing algorithms more complex than what retail stores use. I don't think they are useless. But, we all know they aren't "right", and they only got to be what they are through testing them out with actual customers. And some customers work to determine your algorithm and then use it to their advantage in a big way so you have to change it again, which affects other customers negatively, and the cycle continues. You can't just A/B test pricing and assume that will work in a hands-off fashion either, because customers will take advantage of that. The complexity of pricing is that the best pricing only partly has to do with the thing being sold. You could argue it has nothing to do with the thing being sold. It has everything to do with the buyer: their needs, their resources, and their perception of the product, service, seller, the entire sales experience, market, economy, weather, etc. You name it and it probably has some affect on what the best price would be.