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Isn't price transparency a basic tenet of free market economics? How does anyone look at this and think it's in the best interest of consumers?
by ihsw2 9y ago
Isn't price transparency a basic tenet of free market economics? How does anyone look at this and think it's in the best interest of consumers?
- ttoinou 9y agoNo, free markets theories take into account information asymmetries and principal-agent problem. I don't believe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_one_price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_one_price to be true in the general case How does anyone look at this and think it's in the best interest of consumers? As the article said, discounts for people very sensitive to the price. Some people might not care about spending 2 % more and want to book their flight right now, and some others are ok to spend time to look for price 2% cheaper (+ taking the time to know about the existence of dynamic pricing and techniques to avoid it)
- Finnucane 9y agoThe airlines see their customers as a) wealthy people who can pay whatever for convenience and service, b) business people who travel a lot for work, schedule-driven and not generally paying out of their own pocket, and c) folks who fly only once in a while, for vacations, and are very price sensitive. These are cattle to be shuttled around as cheaply as possible. Any consumer-oriented change the airlines are going to make are mostly for a, somewhat for b, and cost-cutting for c.
- chadlavi 9y agoWho said anything about the best interest of consumers? They're doing this because it's in the best interest of their shareholders.