Price Discrimination Article: Business & Marketing Essay

Price Discrimination
Name
Institution of Affiliation
Date
Price Discrimination Article
An article written by Christopher Elliot (August 19, 2020) highlights the concept of dynamic pricing that is being used by airlines to charge different prices for air tickets. The article emanates from a traveler who raised a complaint about the different prices charged by United Airlines through their website and also their mobile application. The traveler, Russely Pedley, said he had booked a ticket for his wife through the mobile application at the cost of $560, and when he booked a ticket to a similar destination through his United.com website logins, it cost him $670. He felt the company was discriminating against him and charging him more than normal. Opinions given in the article by travel experts indicate that airlines have developed a system of dynamic pricing for competitive advantage based on the shift in the market. Others have argued that the systems used by the airlines have the ability to monitor client's spending patterns even on other sites and using that criteria to charge high or low depending on the consumer's pattern. Another expert opined that the pricing is being used as a motivator for clients to book airlines, such that when one checks the site and they leave without booking a ticket, then the next time they check out, they will likely find the price higher than it was previously just as a motivator to buy tickets whenever they login into the site instead of waiting.
From an economic perspective, the concept of price discrimination can be derived from the above case. Price discrimination is defined as a strategy used by sellers to ...