Wacky Pricing

[andysocial]

Originally published at BunkBlog. You can comment here or there.

I understand supply and demand, and what the market will bear, blah blah blah, but this is entertaining.

Yesterday, Newegg began selling a new gaming laptop, the Asus G73. When Gizmodo and other sites posted it at 8am or so with a claimed price of $1430, the price was $1449 at Newegg. Later in the morning, the sites that blogged about it mentioned the price as $1499.  When I got home, I showed it to my wife, explaining that it was nigh impossible to build a gaming desktop with the same specs for less than the $1500 they were asking. But, when I pulled up the listing, it was $1599.  This morning, just out of curiousity, I looked again – $1549.

There can’t be this much demand and supply change in one 24 hour period, can there? This is like watching Apple stock whenever Steve Jobs speaks.

Comments

[visgoth.livejournal.com]

I imagine it's kind of like how Amazon will offer a new item to different people at different prices in an attempt to establish their optimal price point.

[andysocial]

I hear that Newegg actually adjusts their prices based on inventory in stock and speed of sales, so the prices fluctuate nearly constantly. Seems a strange way to do business, but they're the large corporation and I'm not.

Oh, and it's $1600 now.