7 ms·

At some point in the next 5 years, I predict there will online services that will "proxy-shop" for you. They will specialize in building profiles (cookies, logi

by bo1024 9y ago

At some point in the next 5 years, I predict there will online services that will "proxy-shop" for you. They will specialize in building profiles (cookies, logins, etc) that get offered low prices, then use these to purchase products on your behalf. Perhaps a browser plugin, so that at the moment you go to check out on a product, you send the product's link to the service and they get it for you at a lower price. Then retailers will attempt to bring legal challenges against them for breaking terms of service, that will be interesting...

tessierashpool 9y ago
These services already exist, although I don’t believe they use the implementation you describe. Instead they’re basically coupon collectors. They just find the lowest available price and route you to it, or something like that. (I don’t use any of them, but they advertize to me relentlessly. I should probably try them out, actually.)
- bo1024 9y ago
  That's interesting. Are they actually using personalization to get better prices? I'm thinking of scenarios where if two different browsers visit the same page, they'll get shown different prices depending on their cookies etc. In that case, a third-party site can't really "route you" to a lowest available price, they have to help you make the purchase from the right browser environment.
astura 9y ago
So a travel agent? What's old is new again, I guess.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mysterypie 9y ago
  > So a travel agent. Travel agents were never on the side of the consumer. If you asked travel agents who they perceived they were working for, they'd tell you it's the airlines. This is not just my opinion; in travel industry magazines, articles, etc., this definitely was their stance. They'd choose flights for you that were most profitable for themselves and/or the airlines (and those two factors coincide nicely). Even pre-web, I almost always found a better prices by phoning the airlines directly if I wanted to spend the time.
  - cptskippy 9y ago
    I was explaining travel agents to my kid the other day. The service of the agent was more than just booking you a flight, you were paying for their knowledge and experience with traveling in particular regions. Resources like Zagat were helpful but could only get you so far. In pre internet days if you were flying to far away places like India or Vietnam where your local airline didn't offer service, you would have no resources available for finding or arranging flights, hotels, or other transport. That's where a travel agent was helpful.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      To be fair, the bread and butter for most travel agents was booking flights, cruises, and tour packages. Which is why the corner travel agent isn’t around any longer for the most part. Yes, some were more knowledgeable. My parents used a couple of them over the years. These types of travel agents still exist but they’re generally specialty travel, adventure travel, etc. companies that handle a combination of group trips with guides and private trips with or without guides. Besides the big global ones there are many that concentrate regionally and/or in a particular type of activity.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    In UK in the past we got better deals from the local travel agent than you could book direct from the suppliers. That's going back quite a long way however. When travel agents were local shops, like a local boutique clothing shop, it would seem they had a lot to lose and not that much to gain by working against their customers interests. In short I wouldn't say "never".
- bo1024 9y ago
  Ha. No, the big difference here is the deception factor. Using online retailers' personalization against them. A "meatspace" analogue from 50 years ago would be wearing a disguise to avoid discrimination, for example a woman dressing up in a coat/hat/fake mustache to avoid getting ripped off at the car dealership.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
bogomipz 9y ago
I really like this, why not dynamic purchasing if consumers are increasingly confronted by dynamic pricing? Are there reasons why this wouldn't work? I am curious what would the legal challenge be if dynamic pricing on the sell side is considered acceptable?
- userbinator 9y ago
  I am curious what would the legal challenge be if dynamic pricing on the sell side is considered acceptable? Indeed, this seems to me to be no different than a form of reselling.
- heroprotagonist 9y ago
  I wonder if there would be a case where the technology is patented. Then some startup is acquired and the same consortium ends up owning both the tech to dynamically price and the tech to dynamically purchase..
- hiram112 9y ago
  Morally it seems fair. But like most things in our system, I'm sure it will end up being rigged legally in the big guy's favor. Look at our system now. Big capital can move their tax headquarters to Ireland, its service center to India, its manufacturing to China. Hell, they can now even import low wage workers to the EU and US on visas if it will give them an advantage. But good luck to any consumer trying to buy products at the same prices sold in these same places (e.g. pharmaceuticals). Even digital goods like games, music, and movies are priced differently, but consumers can never take advantage of currency arbitrage as companies ban VPNs, track IPs, restrict payments by the address of credit cards, etc.
  - visarga 9y ago
    Good argument - they 'geo-shift' to reduce their costs on the one hand, and make sure we can't decrease our costs on the other hand. Pretty unfair taking advantage of the system like that.
  - praulv 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
baxtr 9y ago
I have been thinking about that exact service for a while. One big issue is that you need the reverse engineer the pricing models of retailers, i.e. mapping out a high-dimensional space. For that you need a lot of data from the retailers. They could probably ban you quickly if you start pulling price quotes en masse. Then you need to invest a lot in cloaking techniques etc.
- edem 9y ago
  We can have TensorFlow do it...one model to rule them all...there will be neural networks fitting retailers, then there will be adversarial networks deployed by retailers, then NCMs (network counter measure)... the price will be high, since more and more will be consumed by the networks, then as an emergent behavior Skynet will rise and it will launch the missiles...
  - baxtr 9y ago
    What about blockchain technology? That would sure help, too...
    - alkonaut 9y ago
      Once the deep learning blockchains are on quantum computers this will all be easy
- hobofan 9y ago
  You can go an uncloaked route and offer customers that buy the product with an usual profile small cashbacks if they provide you with their data.
- crdb 9y ago
  You don't. At least we didn't. Here's the real problem: 1. modern shopping sites are built haphazardly without structure; 2. a typical page load time is 10-20 seconds for many (most?) shops. 1. matters because you cannot build a simple crawler. This is because sometimes, the brand is in the title, the description is in the brand, and the gender is in the quantity, which itself is in the photo as a pixellated image... You must load the entire page and figure out where the attributes are in a smart way. You can do this today with headless chrome, in the old days with Selenium, etc. ... which brings us to 2. A mainstream, regionally-dominating shop, particularly any that adopt the marketplace model (Amazon, Taobao, etc.) may have as many as 20 million products. Given 2., good luck refreshing this price list in a sane time, even if you crack the attribute extraction. If by some miraculous feat you solve these issues you now have to product match an inventory of billions of listings, most of which are misspelt, missing attributes (brand, etc.), and use photos that even a human could not match by sight. Think how hard it is to find exactly what you want on eBay... The only way is to get the data directly from the retailers. Assuming they will give it to you, you end up with the same problem of feed poisoning that you have with marketing.
Jommi 9y ago
Someone is already doing it for Airlines: https://flightfox.com/ https://flightfox.com/
smn1234 9y ago
why have something/someone purchase for you on your behalf when you can browse through aggregators to find what you like? For instance, there's shopittome. I'd much prefer to select from a list of offerings and sources rather than pay premium for someone/something placing the order and then having to navigate obstacles to return (where accepted) if the item is ill fit. Not just limited to fashion here... electronics, tickets for inconvenient travel time, food, etc.
- junetic 9y ago
  How do you like shopittome btw? We're working on a similar service for higher end fashion, but aim to be more personalized with product types, colors, styles..etc: http://www.tryforager.com http://www.tryforager.com Would love to hear what you think (currently in beta on fb messenger)
amelius 9y ago
I predict that governments will require shops to show the average price for items.

by bo1024 9y ago

tessierashpool 9y ago

These services already exist, although I don’t believe they use the implementation you describe. Instead they’re basically coupon collectors. They just find the lowest available price and route you to it, or something like that. (I don’t use any of them, but they advertize to me relentlessly. I should probably try them out, actually.)

bo1024 9y ago
That's interesting. Are they actually using personalization to get better prices? I'm thinking of scenarios where if two different browsers visit the same page, they'll get shown different prices depending on their cookies etc. In that case, a third-party site can't really "route you" to a lowest available price, they have to help you make the purchase from the right browser environment.

astura 9y ago

So a travel agent? What's old is new again, I guess.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mysterypie 9y ago
> So a travel agent. Travel agents were never on the side of the consumer. If you asked travel agents who they perceived they were working for, they'd tell you it's the airlines. This is not just my opinion; in travel industry magazines, articles, etc., this definitely was their stance. They'd choose flights for you that were most profitable for themselves and/or the airlines (and those two factors coincide nicely). Even pre-web, I almost always found a better prices by phoning the airlines directly if I wanted to spend the time.
- cptskippy 9y ago
  I was explaining travel agents to my kid the other day. The service of the agent was more than just booking you a flight, you were paying for their knowledge and experience with traveling in particular regions. Resources like Zagat were helpful but could only get you so far. In pre internet days if you were flying to far away places like India or Vietnam where your local airline didn't offer service, you would have no resources available for finding or arranging flights, hotels, or other transport. That's where a travel agent was helpful.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    To be fair, the bread and butter for most travel agents was booking flights, cruises, and tour packages. Which is why the corner travel agent isn’t around any longer for the most part. Yes, some were more knowledgeable. My parents used a couple of them over the years. These types of travel agents still exist but they’re generally specialty travel, adventure travel, etc. companies that handle a combination of group trips with guides and private trips with or without guides. Besides the big global ones there are many that concentrate regionally and/or in a particular type of activity.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  In UK in the past we got better deals from the local travel agent than you could book direct from the suppliers. That's going back quite a long way however. When travel agents were local shops, like a local boutique clothing shop, it would seem they had a lot to lose and not that much to gain by working against their customers interests. In short I wouldn't say "never".
bo1024 9y ago
Ha. No, the big difference here is the deception factor. Using online retailers' personalization against them. A "meatspace" analogue from 50 years ago would be wearing a disguise to avoid discrimination, for example a woman dressing up in a coat/hat/fake mustache to avoid getting ripped off at the car dealership.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

bogomipz 9y ago

I really like this, why not dynamic purchasing if consumers are increasingly confronted by dynamic pricing? Are there reasons why this wouldn't work? I am curious what would the legal challenge be if dynamic pricing on the sell side is considered acceptable?

userbinator 9y ago
I am curious what would the legal challenge be if dynamic pricing on the sell side is considered acceptable? Indeed, this seems to me to be no different than a form of reselling.
heroprotagonist 9y ago
I wonder if there would be a case where the technology is patented. Then some startup is acquired and the same consortium ends up owning both the tech to dynamically price and the tech to dynamically purchase..
hiram112 9y ago
Morally it seems fair. But like most things in our system, I'm sure it will end up being rigged legally in the big guy's favor. Look at our system now. Big capital can move their tax headquarters to Ireland, its service center to India, its manufacturing to China. Hell, they can now even import low wage workers to the EU and US on visas if it will give them an advantage. But good luck to any consumer trying to buy products at the same prices sold in these same places (e.g. pharmaceuticals). Even digital goods like games, music, and movies are priced differently, but consumers can never take advantage of currency arbitrage as companies ban VPNs, track IPs, restrict payments by the address of credit cards, etc.
- visarga 9y ago
  Good argument - they 'geo-shift' to reduce their costs on the one hand, and make sure we can't decrease our costs on the other hand. Pretty unfair taking advantage of the system like that.
- praulv 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

baxtr 9y ago

I have been thinking about that exact service for a while. One big issue is that you need the reverse engineer the pricing models of retailers, i.e. mapping out a high-dimensional space. For that you need a lot of data from the retailers. They could probably ban you quickly if you start pulling price quotes en masse. Then you need to invest a lot in cloaking techniques etc.

edem 9y ago
We can have TensorFlow do it...one model to rule them all...there will be neural networks fitting retailers, then there will be adversarial networks deployed by retailers, then NCMs (network counter measure)... the price will be high, since more and more will be consumed by the networks, then as an emergent behavior Skynet will rise and it will launch the missiles...
- baxtr 9y ago
  What about blockchain technology? That would sure help, too...
  - alkonaut 9y ago
    Once the deep learning blockchains are on quantum computers this will all be easy
hobofan 9y ago
You can go an uncloaked route and offer customers that buy the product with an usual profile small cashbacks if they provide you with their data.
crdb 9y ago
You don't. At least we didn't. Here's the real problem: 1. modern shopping sites are built haphazardly without structure; 2. a typical page load time is 10-20 seconds for many (most?) shops. 1. matters because you cannot build a simple crawler. This is because sometimes, the brand is in the title, the description is in the brand, and the gender is in the quantity, which itself is in the photo as a pixellated image... You must load the entire page and figure out where the attributes are in a smart way. You can do this today with headless chrome, in the old days with Selenium, etc. ... which brings us to 2. A mainstream, regionally-dominating shop, particularly any that adopt the marketplace model (Amazon, Taobao, etc.) may have as many as 20 million products. Given 2., good luck refreshing this price list in a sane time, even if you crack the attribute extraction. If by some miraculous feat you solve these issues you now have to product match an inventory of billions of listings, most of which are misspelt, missing attributes (brand, etc.), and use photos that even a human could not match by sight. Think how hard it is to find exactly what you want on eBay... The only way is to get the data directly from the retailers. Assuming they will give it to you, you end up with the same problem of feed poisoning that you have with marketing.

Jommi 9y ago

Someone is already doing it for Airlines: https://flightfox.com/ https://flightfox.com/

smn1234 9y ago

why have something/someone purchase for you on your behalf when you can browse through aggregators to find what you like? For instance, there's shopittome. I'd much prefer to select from a list of offerings and sources rather than pay premium for someone/something placing the order and then having to navigate obstacles to return (where accepted) if the item is ill fit. Not just limited to fashion here... electronics, tickets for inconvenient travel time, food, etc.

junetic 9y ago
How do you like shopittome btw? We're working on a similar service for higher end fashion, but aim to be more personalized with product types, colors, styles..etc: http://www.tryforager.com http://www.tryforager.com Would love to hear what you think (currently in beta on fb messenger)

amelius 9y ago

I predict that governments will require shops to show the average price for items.