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Here's a business case for how this could be useful and why I'm going to try it. I operate a string of ~60 local businesses that have physical storefronts. On

by aresant 12y ago

Here's a business case for how this could be useful and why I'm going to try it. I operate a string of ~60 local businesses that have physical storefronts. On average each store has 5 local competitors. Our customers are VERY price sensitive - they will almost always call the "lowest price" guy in the area first. As a result we currently have a duct-tape system to monitor competitor pricing and tweak ours as fast as possible. MonitorBook would be a potentially much simpler mechanism to orchestrate this. If the MB team is reading this drop me a line and we'd be a potentially great case study / early adopter. Things that would have to work to make this usable long-term: a) API so we could pull this data into our pricing algo. b) Clear error-checking confidence - if a site we're monitoring changes their code / display and we miss it, we'd have to go back to duct-tape which is sloppy and labor intensive, but reliable.

walterbell 12y ago
What happens if your competitors also use the same service, would the algos recursively spiral downward?
- bsoares 12y ago
  Each business has different profit margins so I'm sure each would have to set a bare minimum price thus the aforementioned "pricing algo".
gee_totes 12y ago
What happens if your competitors realize you are using the service and devise some way to trick MontorBook into reporting the wrong prices? [Edit: related link, which was the inspiration for my question: http://mailinator.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-get-gmailcom-banned-not-that-i.html http://mailinator.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-get-gmailcom-b...]
- atmosx 12y ago
  You change your strategy :-) It's like Cryptonomicon "The most advanced technology, usually wins the war". If they can do that, you'll have to figure out quickly and adapt... But to my personal experience, there are way more what if(s) flying around than what actually happens.

by aresant 12y ago

walterbell 12y ago

What happens if your competitors also use the same service, would the algos recursively spiral downward?

bsoares 12y ago
Each business has different profit margins so I'm sure each would have to set a bare minimum price thus the aforementioned "pricing algo".

gee_totes 12y ago

What happens if your competitors realize you are using the service and devise some way to trick MontorBook into reporting the wrong prices? [Edit: related link, which was the inspiration for my question: http://mailinator.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-get-gmailcom-banned-not-that-i.html http://mailinator.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-get-gmailcom-b...]

atmosx 12y ago
You change your strategy :-) It's like Cryptonomicon "The most advanced technology, usually wins the war". If they can do that, you'll have to figure out quickly and adapt... But to my personal experience, there are way more what if(s) flying around than what actually happens.