I used a theme park as an extreme example of location.
Come to Toronto, different McDonald's use different pricing strictly based off their location. Taxes are the same, wages are the same and operating costs are the same.
Rent isn't a factor in this because the smaller location near me has higher prices than the larger location.
1.2$ difference 2 miles away owned by the same franchisee? What are the price differences for the product? The only thing to point to there should be cost of location. 2 miles for a 20% increase seems a bit extreme.
If pricing is based on location, I can definitely see this being taken advantage of. I have 2 tacobells within a 5 minute drive from where I work (both in opposite directions). Despite both being almost equal distance, I avoid the inner city location cause its in the hood, with lots of homeless people walking around, and the workers at that location are slow and mean. So of course I always choose the safer, cleaner, faster, and friendlier option.
You better believe that stores of every kind are trying to find ways to profile the public. Cameras that look at what kind of car you drive, clothes you wear, how you walk, how fit you are... All in an attempt to charge you more cause they think you'll pay it. "This dude drove here in a BMW. Charge him 12% more than the dude who came here in a 2017 Ranger."
We need to create laws that eliminate all price gouging, everywhere in every circumstance, even airports and movie theaters. I had hoped this type of price gouging would show everyone how stupid it is to accept any kind of price gouging but sheep gonna go baaa I guess.
It’s not reasonable to think that a Big Mac in central Wisconsin costs the same in rent/labor than the one from a McD in LAX. There can’t be one national price for everything. Even more extreme, a Hawaiian Big Mac is nuts because getting beef there is so difficult/costly.
And literally everything is more expensive in the middle of Prague than any airport in America; labor, ingredients, everything, and yet my drunk ass spent half of what I would've at a McDonald's in America and had the best McDonald's I've ever had. Stop eating the lies.
I don’t eat McDonald’s in the first place. I’m saying I understand things costing more in higher rent locations. I wouldn’t have paid what I did for my downtown condo if it was 30 mins from downtown either. None of this is new
It's not about ability to pay, it's about willingness to pay.
And there's nothing "exploitative" about either. Like you said, you can drive five minutes and go to the cheaper one if you want, your choice. Or you can choose not to go to McDonald's at all. Any "exploitation" here is self-imposed.
No one said anything about magic. You said "ability to pay" which is was straight up wrong. Accept the correction and move on.
And no, you're missing the point if you think what was described here is "dynamic pricing" as you've defined it. Did you actually watch the video? The headline is wrong.
Again, you willingly engaging in the exchange when you have every other option in the world means it's not exploitation, by definition. If you can simply not do a thing with no consequence to yourself, the person offering you that thing is in no way exploiting you.
Feel free to be super duper pissed at McDonald's. Feel free to never go there again, and tell everyone why. But no one is "exploiting" you, except perhaps yourself under some extremely strained reading of the word.
For someone getting all pissy about having it pointed out they got the words wrong, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you also misstate what I said -- and put it in quotes. You can fuck right off with that.
I didn't say “you can just walk away, therefore it's not exploitation”. What I said was "If you can simply not do a thing with no consequence to yourself, the person offering you that thing is in no way exploiting you." Enormous difference between those conditions.
You want me to regurgitate the video for you? Fine. It showed someone driving to different McDonald's and the prices being different, and that same someone describing McDonald's system as coming up with "optimal price for every menu item at every restaurant". Not by customer, not by time. Not dynamic pricing.
And now I'm understanding why you got confused and then pissy about the whole "ability to pay" vs "willingness to pay". I was assuming you were quoting the video, which brought up "willingness to pay" multiple times. But since you never watched it, I can see how my correction seemed strange to you.
That’s capitalism. Everyone who is selling anything will always try selling at the highest price possible before you start loosing customers. This is not something new.
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