E-Tailers Playing The Hide-The-Price Game, Thanks To The Supreme Court
Written by Evan SchumanFebruary 11th, 2010
It's becoming a common tactic for E-Commerce and some mobile sites to now hide much of their pricing. But in an interesting piece on Sunday (Feb. 7), The New York Times pegged much of the recent price-games to a 2007 Supreme Court case that gave manufacturers much more power to dictate pricing. And it has motivated them to forbid retailers from advertising their merchandise for less than a dictated price—for E-tailers, "advertising" includes posting on a Web product (as opposed to checkout) page.
This game is a sure loser for all concerned, and that includes retailers that are primarily brick-and-mortar, E-tailers and manufacturers. Manufacturers: Welcome to the year 2010. There are all kinds of non-traditional ways your products will make you money. Beyond eBay, even Amazon and others have toyed with recycling used products. Your ability to control prices is limited, but the bigger concern is your efforts to allow lower prices but to prohibit them from being discussed out loud. In the day of the Web, mobile and Twitter, this strategy simply won't work. In the meantime, while you are futilely trying to make it work, you'll alienate consumers and retailers.
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