Some webshops can wait for us with manipulated prices
As of today, the browser add-on is available to everyone, revealing when online stores and stores adjust their prices to the geographic location and financial background of shoppers.
An international research group puts a tool in the hands of online shoppers to check how the prices of online stores change depending on where and with what browser they order a product or service.
Everyone is aware that the same product can be bought at different prices in specialty stores, shopping malls, department stores. And while traveling abroad, we can also see that prices vary from country to country. This is no different for online web stores, they change their prices based on what information they have about the user. To prove this, an international research team asked for quotes for twenty days in a study of the 200 largest online stores. Parallel queries simulated visitors from different geographic locations with browsing histories. Based on the results also published in the Wall Street Journal, it was clear that the browser and operating system used did not affect the prices of the online stores surveyed. There have already been differences based on the user's location, such as significant differences in e-book prices. The biggest discrepancies were based on the pages I visited earlier. For example, it could also be clearly shown that some online stores offer their products at a lower price if the user comes from a price comparison site. From the research results, the simple internet user can also deduce the important lesson that it is not worth looking at Rolex watches on the web, for example, before looking for a cheap flight ticket.
Internet technologies offer an easy way for stores to sell a product at different prices to different customers. For example, a buyer logging in from Germany sees a higher price than a buyer coming from Spain. Noticing this is not an easy task because not everyone has computers in different countries from which you can check the price of the product.
However, with the help of a new application, anyone can now check at what price they could buy a particular product from another country. The app works from Firefox and Google Chrome browsers, all you need to do is download and install a free add-on. Then all we have to do in the online store is select the price of the product. After a short time, a list will appear showing how much you will be charged for the same product or service if you enter the online store from England, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Finland, Germany, Spain or the United States. An add-on called $ heriff is available at http://pdexperiment.cba.upc.edu/.
Based on the results, all we have to do is make the purchase through the proxy server of the country with the lowest price. Setting this up isn’t one of the easiest tasks, but developers are already working on the next version of the app, which can also be used to make purchases from the simulated site.
