In the United States, people are used to everyone paying basically the same price for everything. This is a factor of the modern brick-and-mortar store where prices are set for convenience. Comparison shoppers quickly punish stores who charge more than their competitors.
This concept of pricing is actually ethnocentric. In other countries people expect to be able to barter the price of various products. Giving discounts to family and friends is simply how business is done.
E-business works a bit differently. Now the marketplace allows businesses to chance their prices quickly if the demand for a product changes. Likewise customers can compare prices even more quickly than before. Businesses are becoming adept at the art of dynamic pricing, where the price charged depends on the customer that is buying it. Computer record keeping has allowed this to be done on a large and complex scale not possible before.
The question of fairness is an important one. Customer service difficulties abound when Americans do not feel they have been dealt with fairly. While every sales contract is independent of others, giving each person different prices makes it impossible for people to get the best deal. It becomes a matter of luck. So dynamic pricing is, to us, most unfair when not everyone has the option of somehow attaining the best price.
There are several things a company can do to take advantage of dynamic pricing without creating a customer service nightmare. Information is the key. If a customer does not get the best price because of a lack of research, this is generally acceptable. For example, if a brick and mortar store is using regular pricing in the store but dynamic pricing online, it needs to either keep its dynamic prices higher than the store ones or, more likely, honor the online price in store.
Memberships are another way to vary prices. If anyone can join, letting members pay lower prices is socially a...