Amazon is planning to introduce a huge unexpected change to its coveted e-commerce platform. The company is planning to phase-out list prices(or manufacturer’s retail prices) and directly show discounted prices to the users who visit the website.
If you’re one of those customers who loved to visit Amazon to checkout the discounted price of a product as compared to its list price, then you’re out of luck. According to NY Times, the company has dropped any mention of list price from the website and is planning to show just one price to you — the discounted price. Now, you cannot compare the sale price to the original retail price, but still go about searching for the cheapest deal online.
Amazon is introducing this strategy change because as seen in online shopping, users only buy products when they’re on sale. And do just that, sellers had to list their products with heavy discounts all year round, thus doing away with sales periods completely. And the company plans to change this thinking completely.
It now believes that the online e-commerce industry has matured and it no longer needs to focus on volume to make up for the losses due to the sale. Amazon now doesn’t need to attract users by listing a heavily discounted price, because it is certain that users will buy the product even without the mention of discounts. Thus, the company is taking a data-driven approach to testing out a new pricing strategy.
The new strategy comes at a time when e-commerce companies are constantly being subject to dozens of consumer lawsuits, stemming from the differentiated discount pricing on the website. And the media actually bloats the matter, while it is actually much less than what it’s made out to be. Recently, the company had been arbitrarily involved in fake-discount lawsuit, which was later dismissed by the judge who called the clause as ‘unconscionable’.
But, will users be pleased to see no discounts on their favorite e-commerce website?
E-commerce has been all about offering discounts on products available in the market at a higher rate, and placing them front and center on the website. But it has sometimes(or mostly!?) been considered as a bogus marketing stunt on the part of the retailer, who displays a higher list(or retail) price to sell the product at a price similar to the offline retail stores.
But, if Amazon introduces a new pricing scheme and gets rid of discounts, then how does it plan to poach more customers and show higher revenues in the future. We’ll have to wait to see how all this list and discount pricing hullabaloo pans out for the retailers as well as the users.
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