Reading: Yes / No / Not Given: Question 1

Online retailers and travel-booking platforms increasingly set prices not for a market but for an individual: your browsing history, device type, location and even the time you have spent hesitating on a page can all feed into an algorithm that decides what number you see. Companies defend the practice, sometimes called personalised or dynamic pricing, as a natural extension of long-established discounting, a loyalty-card holder pays less than a first-time shopper, and nobody objects to that. I find this comparison unconvincing. A loyalty discount is transparent and available to anyone willing to sign up; algorithmic personalisation is neither. Two customers viewing an identical flight at the identical moment may be shown prices that differ by a significant margin, and neither is told why, nor even that the number in front of them has been individually tailored.

The strongest objection is not that personalised pricing exists but that it is invisible. Regulators in several jurisdictions have begun requiring firms to disclose when a price has been algorithmically customised, and I believe this modest step should become a global minimum standard rather than a patchwork of local rules. Disclosure would not eliminate the practice, but it would at least allow a shopper to recognise that the figure on screen is not a fixed, universal price and to shop accordingly.

Some economists argue that personalised pricing can, in aggregate, lower average prices by allowing firms to charge less to price-sensitive customers who would otherwise not purchase at all. That may well be true, and I do not dispute the underlying economic logic. My concern is narrower: even an efficient practice can be an unfair one if it operates in the dark. A retailer that charges a low-income customer less because an algorithm has inferred their sensitivity to price is not, in my view, offering generosity; it is exploiting a knowledge asymmetry that the customer never consented to. Until transparency is mandatory, I would encourage regulators to treat undisclosed personalised pricing as a form of manipulation rather than a routine commercial technique, whatever efficiency gains its defenders claim on its behalf.

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer? Write YES, NO or NOT GIVEN.

1. The writer regards personalised pricing as essentially the same thing as a loyalty-card discount.
2. The writer supports making disclosure of algorithmically personalised prices a global minimum standard.
3. The writer argues that personalised pricing should be banned outright.
4. The writer accepts that personalised pricing can lower average prices for price-sensitive customers.
5. According to the writer, most online shoppers can currently find out easily when a price they are shown has been personalised.
6. The writer regards efficient pricing practices as automatically fair.
7. The writer believes regulators should treat undisclosed personalised pricing as a form of manipulation.