Surveillance Pricing

"Will 'surveillance pricing' help or harm consumers?." Episode of "On Point" broadcast and podcast, 14 August 2024. WBUR, NPR-Boston. Jonathan Chang, producer. Meghna Chakrabarti, host.

As of the end of August, 2024, available here.[1]

Companies track your data online. So it's no surprise that they know a lot about your habits and preferences.

Now, they're trying to use that data to offer different prices to different customers, for the same items.

Today, On Point: Will “surveillance pricing” help or harm consumers?

Guests

Samuel Levine, director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.

Lindsay Owens, economic sociologist. Executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a DC-based progressive think tank focused on public policy.

Sanjog Misra, professor of marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Transcript

See and/or "listen" for background on real-world electronic surveillance as of 2024. That surveillance is to a degree surprising even to the Initial Compiler of this Wiki so keep this in mind for the theme of surveillance in dystopian SF from We and Nineteen Eighty-Four to THE CIRCLE (film) and beyond.

RDE, finishing, 29Aug24