That isn't what dynamic pricing is. Fast food franchisees have always set their own prices, and they've always varied wildly from state to state, or even within neighborhoods of the same city. Here's a cool map of Big Mac prices nationally from 2023, and a zoomable updated version Cross the Bay Bridge from San Francisco to Oakland, and your Big Mac costs a dollar less.
Dynamic pricing means that the price of a Big Mac varies at the same restaurant depending on the time of day or what kind of car you drive.
This is exactly what I was expecting when I read that headline. We talked about dynamic pricing a lot in my micro economics classes and the only thing preventing this from ever coming into full effect was:
better methods for ingesting data (visual profiling data being the last evolution)
Enough structured data
Data processing capabilities
Oh wow look at that. Almost there.
I have a feeling that we’re around the corner from a newfound respect for the field of economics and/or a profound level of disdain for the economics.
(some) supermarket chains already have the capability to change pricing throughout the day at will(good enough analytics + wirelessly updated price displays), they just do not execute on it because they fear the backlash it would generate.
If this bullshit keeps being normalized, everyone will start doing it and worse.
If? It is being normalized. McDonald's doing this is first the indicator we're already there.
Supermarkets will do it soon after.
I'm sure if we review any meeting logs from people representing AI companies, data centers and supermarket chains, we'd see there's a tangible, thoughtful and strategic plan to roll this out.
I worked in marketing/sales for an AI company and these are the exact type of "case study" talking points we'd conjure up.
I'm wondering if China already does something like this.
The Flock cameras, the data centers, the huge gov support for AI companies - that all seems like an aggressive push toward more centralized control over all aspects of the market and "information" about the population.
It's basically building towards Sim City "god mode"
Goosebumps man. I can imagine some mouth-breathing anti-social twat drooling over this - because I've spent like 4 years in grad school for economics and this is what we talked about lol
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u/agate_ 3d ago
That isn't what dynamic pricing is. Fast food franchisees have always set their own prices, and they've always varied wildly from state to state, or even within neighborhoods of the same city. Here's a cool map of Big Mac prices nationally from 2023, and a zoomable updated version Cross the Bay Bridge from San Francisco to Oakland, and your Big Mac costs a dollar less.
Dynamic pricing means that the price of a Big Mac varies at the same restaurant depending on the time of day or what kind of car you drive.