Schumpeter1
Flexible figures
A growing number of companies are using “dynamic” pricing
经济观察室：灵活定价策略介绍
“动态”定价日益兴盛
Print edition | Business
Jan 28th 2016
《经济学人》印刷版·商业
2016年1月28日
IF A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing2, as Lord Darlington observes in Oscar Wilde’s “Lady Windermere’s Fan”3, then it is getting progressively harder to be a cynic. A growing number of companies keep their prices in a constant state of flux—moving them up or down in response to an ever-shifting multitude of variables.
在奥斯卡·王尔德(Oscar Wilde)的喜剧《温夫人的扇子》(Lady Windermere’s Fan)中，达林顿勋爵(Lord Darlington)有一句名言：什么是俗气？俗气就是对所有商品的价格了如指掌，却对它们的内涵和价值一无所知。不过现在看来，想达到这样的俗气也是越来越难了，因为越来越多的公司开始采取动态定价策略，根据情况随时调整商品价格。
Businesses have always offered different prices to different groups of customers. They offer “matinée specials” for afternoon cinema-goers or “happy hours” for early-evening drinkers. They offer steep discounts to students or pensioners. Some put the same product into more than one type of packaging, each marketed to a different income group.
说起来，差别定价是企业的一贯做法，比如影院为下午场提供“日场特价”，夜店在傍晚初临时候提供“欢乐时光”优惠服务，学生和退休人员购物可享受高额折扣，有时候同样的商品有不同的包装，以满足不同收入水平客户的需求。
Dynamic pricing takes all this to a new level—changing prices by the minute and sometimes tailoring them to whatever is known about the income, location and spending history of individual buyers. The practice goes back to the early 1980s when American Airlines began to vary the price of tickets to fight competition from discounters such as People’s Express. It spread to other airlines, and thence to hotels, railways and car-rental firms. But it only became the rage with the arrival of e-commerce.
而动态定价将这些做法提升到了一个新的阶段，有时候还会根据买家的收入、所在的位置和消费习惯来调整价格。这种做法最早可追溯到上世纪80年代初，当时美国航空公司(American Airlines)开始调整票价，以应对来自诸如人民快递(People’s Express)等折扣店的竞争。后来这种做法逐渐扩展到其他航空公司，然后是酒店、铁路和汽车租赁公司等，不过随着电子商务时代的到来，动态定价开始真正流行起来。
The price of goods and services sold online can be varied constantly and effortlessly, in accordance with the numbers and characteristics of those making purchases, and factors such as the weather. Competitors can be monitored constantly, and their prices matched. Amazon updates its price list every ten minutes on average, based on data it is constantly collecting, according to Econsultancy, a research and consulting firm.
网购商品和服务的价格可以根据销售量、客户购买特点和天气等因素方便地随时调整，而各大网购平台也会持续关注友商的动向，以及时调整自己的价格。研究咨询公司Econsultancy称，亚马逊(Amazon)会根据其收集的海量数据，每10分钟更新一次它的价格列表。
The practice is spreading to physical retailers, which are installing electronic price displays and borrowing pricing models from e-retailers. Kohl’s, with nearly 1,200 stores in America, now holds sales that last for hours rather than days, pinpointing the brief periods when discounts are most needed. Cintra, a Spanish infrastructure firm, has opened several toll roads in Texas that change prices every five minutes, to try to keep traffic moving at more than 50mph (80kph). Sports teams, concert organisers and even zookeepers have embraced dynamic pricing to exploit demand for hot tickets and stimulate appetite for unwanted ones.
这种做法正在向线下延伸，实体商家已开始安装电子价签，并向电商取经。在美国拥有近1200家门店的科尔士百货(Kohl's)目前已把定价周期从几天缩短为几小时，并可精准安排限时折扣，西班牙基建公司辛特拉(Cintra)已在德州开设了几条五分钟一调价的收费公路，以把交通速度保持在50英里/小时(80千米/小时)以上。体育俱乐部、剧院、甚至是动物园都开始采取了动态定价策略，以统筹调配高低票价。
The dynamic-pricing revolution provides plenty of benefits for businesses. Besides helping them smooth demand (which can spare them the cost of maintaining extra capacity for peak times), it makes it easier for them to squeeze more out of richer customers. Travel websites have experimented with steering users of Apple computers—assumed to be better-off than Windows PC users—towards more expensive options. Airlines have been caught charging loyal travellers more for a ticket than infrequent travellers, on the assumption that they are more likely to be on a work trip, so their employer will probably be paying. The technology is far from perfect: ever since buying a coffee machine online your columnist4 (who is not good at newfangled tasks such as clearing browser cookies) has been inundated with offers for coffee machines, as if the purchase was proof not of a need that had been satisfied but of an insatiable desire.
这场动态定价革命给企业带来的好处除了帮助他们企稳需求（降低高峰存货成本）外，还使他们可以更方便地赚取高端客户的潜在利润，旅游网站已在引导苹果电脑用户选择高价服务，一般认为苹果用户比Windows用户更加高端。人们发现，航空公司杀熟的原因是他们认为熟客很有可能是商务客户，而相比于个人消费，企业消费自然不太在意价格。不过目前来说技术仍然不够成熟：你会发现你网购了一个咖啡机后，你的网购小秘书（即使智能助理面对清理cookie等骚操作也是无能为力）都快被咖啡机商家挤爆了，好像完成一次网购不是你购物的终点，而是激起了你永不满足的剁手欲望。
Even if the technology becomes more sophisticated, there are two risks for businesses with dynamic pricing. The first is psychological resistance: companies’ reputations can suffer if they offend customers’ sense of fairness. Uber encountered a backlash when it increased its prices eightfold during storms in New York in 2013. Such “surge” pricing makes perfect economic sense: drivers are more likely to go out in hostile conditions if they get paid more; and many customers would prefer a high-priced ride to no ride at all. But these arguments cut little ice when prices run counter to people’s sense of equity. So, in this week’s snowstorms in New York, Uber capped its surge prices for its regular taxis at just 3.5 times the normal fare.
即使技术变得更加成熟，动态定价的企业也面临着两方面的风险。首先是客户的心理抗拒：侵害公平原则会损害公司信誉。2013年，优步(Uber)在纽约遭遇暴雨时把打车价格提高了8倍，这遭到了客户的强烈抵制。这种“高峰”定价从经济学上来说是完全合理的：提高劳动报酬会提高司机在恶劣天气时接单的欲望，而许多顾客在这时候要坐就坐高价车。但是，当价格高到影响了客户的公平感的时候，这些理论分析就没什么意义了。因此，在本周纽约遭遇暴雪时，优步将其普通出租车的高峰价格限制在仅上浮3.5倍。
Psychological resistance can be fierce when companies use data collected from their customers to charge them more. That is why, in 2000, Amazon quickly dropped a scheme to charge some customers more for DVDs based on their personal profiles, and why it has trodden carefully since. Customers are learning to play the game. Some are searching for flights from an internet café instead of their living-rooms, to get lower fares. Others are piling goods into their online baskets and then failing to click “buy”, hoping this will prompt the seller to offer a better deal.
而当公司利用客户信息向他们收取高价时，客户心理抗拒可能会非常强烈。2000年亚马逊(Amazon)本计划根据用户资料向某些DVD买家收取更多费用，但是当考虑到这会带来较大的客户压力时，它迅速放弃了这一计划，并在之后都小心行事。顾客们也学会了和商家玩捉迷藏，一些人在网咖而不是家里购买机票以获得更低的票价；另一些人网购时将商品堆在购物车中，但是并不着急购买，希望这能促使卖家提供更低的价格。
Price-fixation
The second risk with dynamic pricing is that it ends in a race to the bottom. Companies that sell online have long been caught up in a war for the top slot on price-comparison sites: even being cheaper by a penny can make all the difference. Physical retailers are being caught in the same logic: those adopting dynamic pricing are mostly doing so to avoid being turned into mere showrooms by customers who inspect the goods but then buy online. The Nebraska Furniture Mart constantly watches what competitors such as Amazon and Best Buy are charging, and updates its in-store electronic displays each morning to meet its guarantee of offering the lowest price. This is obviously good for customers. But getting fixated on prices can distract businesses from seeking ways to make their products and services so attractive that customers will be less fussy about their cost, as the most successful purveyors of luxury items, from Ferraris to Hermès scarves, do.
低价调整
动态定价的第二个风险是它有可能会演变为一场价格战。长期以来，网购公司经常陷入比价陷阱：有时候价格差一分钱都有很大的不同。实体商家的情况也差不多：采用动态定价的实体商家大多也采取低价策略，以避免沦为网购客户的实体体验店，客户在他们店中看好了款式后却选择了网购。内布拉斯加州家具用品市场(Nebraska Furniture Mart)一直关注着亚马逊(Amazon)和百思买(Best Buy)等在线友商的定价，每天早上更新自家门店的电子价签，以履行提供市场最低价的承诺。这显然对顾客有好处，但太关心价格可能会分散商家的注意力，那些最成功的奢侈品，比如法拉利汽车和爱马仕围巾，它们的客户群体更关心产品和服务的质量，而对价格不是很在意，如果太关心价格可能会使这些商家分心。
The oldest form of dynamic pricing was practised in ancient bazaars, where merchants would size up their customers before the haggling began. Those retailers might not have been able to compute as many different variables as today’s algorithms. But they still have something to teach today’s dynamic pricers about the importance of establishing trust and playing on desire. Cynical as it sounds, to understand a customer’s underlying willingness to part with their money you need to pay a good deal of attention to values.
最古老的动态定价模式出现在古代的集市上，那时候的商人们在和买家谈价钱之前会对他们的购买力进行预判，他们没法像今天的同行一样考虑许多复杂的变量，但他们会培养客户信任感，并揣摩客户的购物心理，这些做法仍会给今天的动态定价者一些启示。是否俗气另当别论，要了解客户的购物心理，你就需要对自己的商品价值给予足够的关注。
注释：
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Schumpeter：1883 -1950，美籍奥地利裔政治经济学家，创立了“创新发展理论”，提出了“创新”及其在经济发展中的作用，此处用Schumpeter作为文章标题名，意指一种创新性的经济现象，译为“经济观察室”；
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这是王尔德作品中的一句名言：What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. 一般翻译做：一个愤世嫉俗的人知道所有东西的价格，却不知道任何东西的价值。但是cynic（“愤世嫉俗”、“犬儒”）在英语和汉语中的含义都较为模糊，容易引起歧义，在文章最后一段又出现cynical一词，综合上下文语境翻译做“俗气的”；
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达林顿勋爵（Lord Darlington observes in），奥斯卡•王尔德（Oscar Wilde）的喜剧《温夫人的扇子》（Lady Windermere’s Fan）中的人物；
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Colomnist原意是“专栏作家”，在这里指网站为客户提供的客户专员一类角色，一般由机器人充当，会在网页以弹窗或内嵌形式提供咨询服务或个性广告，在这里综合上下文翻译做“网购小秘书”。
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