Benefits of Price Gouging

This article in the WSJ discusses the advantages of higher prices during emergencies.

How much ... ?

Patti Page's song.

Internet Access in Hotels

This article from Slate describes well the choice hotels face when deciding whether to include "free" Internet access with their rooms or to require an additional payment from their guests.

Online Price Discrimination

This article in The Economist is a nice discussion of how companies can use the Internet to gather information and to use the information to discriminate in price.

Price Discrimination on the Internet

This classic news item describes an instance when Amazon charged IE users different prices than shoppers who used Netscape. The instance illustrates well how web sites can customize a visitor's experience and the opportunities it provides to discriminate in price.

Before reading the item take this quiz: Who saw the lower price, IE users or Netscape users?

Price Discrimination or Steering Customers to What They Want?

This article from the WSJ describes how Orbitz "is experimenting with showing different hotel offers to Mac and PC visitors". This experiment be viewed as an attempt to discriminate in price or as an attempt to help customers find what they want more easily. The experiment also illustrates how web sites and offers can be customized. 

Before reading the article, take a quick quiz:  Who saw more expensive hotels earlier in the list from Orbitz, PC or Mac users?

Web sites discriminate

This article in the WSJ describes how Staples uses estimated distance from a brick and mortar store and possibly estimated income and other factors to vary the price displayed on its online store.