| 送交者: icemessenger[♂☆★★★SuperMod★★★☆♂] 于 2024-03-17 1:05 已读 3490 次 | icemessenger的个人频道 |
To surge or not to surge, the algorithm is the question 当线上商业模式中司空见惯的差异化定价进入叫车和快餐等人们熟悉的实体商业时，消费者会反抗。
From rides to burgers, consumers may balk when differential pricing comes to their favourite real-world businesses. 6park.com
任何经常叫网约车的人都已经习惯了峰时定价。试一下在下雨天的晚餐时间或学校接送时间叫一辆优步(Uber)或Lyft的车，你会付比平时更多的钱，有时甚至是多很多。然而，当消费者在实体世界中面对“动态定价”这样的常见线上商业模式时，他们可能会反抗。想想最近美国快餐连锁店Wendy's招致的消费者的强烈反对吧，起因是该公司在一次财报电话会议上宣布，他们正在考虑在需求高峰期间对汉堡进行峰时定价，并为此投资了2000万美元研发新的人工智能系统。 6park.com 6park.comThe first tweets following the announcement were amusing, as customers joked about arbitraging their lunch. But within a couple of weeks the social media comments became ugly and politicians such as Senator Elizabeth Warren started attacking the company for “price gouging”. Wendy’s quickly backtracked on the idea. 6park.com消息公布后人们最初发的推文很有趣，顾客们开玩笑说要对他们的午餐进行套利。但在几周内，社交媒体上的评论就变得难看起来，参议员伊丽莎白•沃伦(Elizabeth Warren)等政界人士开始抨击该公司“价格欺诈”。Wendy’s很快就放弃了这个主意。 6park.com 6park.comThe same phenomenon has occurred at movie theatres that tried to raise the price of seats during high demand (though airlines and hotels do it online all the time and most entertainment venues have regular bargains on known slow days). What’s more, surge pricing isn’t the only algorithmic manoeuvre that’s come under fire when translated offline into non-digital businesses. 6park.com影院试图在需求高峰提高票价时也遭遇了同样的现象（尽管航空公司和酒店一直在网上这样做，而大多数娱乐场所在大众熟知的淡季会定期打折）。更重要的是，峰时定价并不是唯一在转向线下非数字商业时受到抨击的算法操作。 6park.com 6park.comThe Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice, following numerous complaints from tenants’ associations, recently took a joint action to fight algorithmic collusion in the residential housing market. Landlords are increasingly using rent-maximising software to keep prices higher than they might be in normal market conditions for tens of millions of apartments around the country. 6park.com美国联邦贸易委员会(FTC)和司法部在接到租户协会的大量投诉后，最近采取了一项联合行动，打击住房市场上的算法合谋。房东们越来越多地使用租金最大化软件，以使全国数千万套公寓的价格持续高于正常市场条件下的价格。 6park.com 6park.comAs an FTC briefing on the action noted, “the housing industry isn’t alone in using potentially illegal collusive algorithms”. The DoJ has previously secured a guilty plea related to the use of pricing algorithms to fix prices in online resale of goods; it has an ongoing case against the use of algorithmic collusion by meat processors. Meanwhile, there are several private cases being brought against hotels and casinos for online price fixing. 6park.com正如联邦贸易委员会在一份关于该行动的简报中所指出的那样，“房地产行业并不是唯一使用潜在非法的合谋算法的行业”。美国司法部此前曾就利用定价算法在网上转售商品时操纵价格一事让涉事者认罪；它有一个正在进行的案件，针对肉类加工商使用算法合谋。与此同时，还有几起针对酒店和赌场的在线价格操纵的私人案件被提起。 6park.com 6park.comPlatform technology firms developed or perfected techniques like dynamic pricing, real-time auctions, data tracking, preferential advertising and all the other tricks of surveillance capitalism. But the behaviour we take for granted online somehow becomes more problematic when these methods are deployed in the real world. People are outraged about the price of burgers or their rent surging but don’t think twice when it happens to the cost of their commute — particularly when they are booking it on an app. 6park.com平台技术公司开发或完善了诸如动态定价、实时拍卖、数据跟踪、优惠广告等技术以及“监控资本主义”(surveillance capitalism)运用的所有其他手法。但是，当这些方法在现实世界中应用时，我们在网上认为理所当然的行为不知何故变得有问题了。人们对汉堡价格上涨或房租上涨感到愤怒，但当通勤费用上涨时，他们却毫不犹豫地付钱——尤其是当他们在应用程序上预订时。 6park.comI suspect that some of this is down to our expectation that we will all be treated equally — or at least pay set prices in a fair market — when we walk into a physical business. Historically, that assumption has been fairly well policed by regulators. When you walk into a retail store in the real world, you can’t be charged a different price or shown different offerings or advertising because of your income or the colour of your skin. 6park.com我怀疑，这在一定程度上归结于我们的期望，即当我们走进一家实体店时，我们都将受到平等对待——或者至少是在一个公平的市场上支付定好的价格。从历史上看，这一假设得到了监管机构的良好监管保护。当你走进现实世界中的一家零售店时，你不能因为你的收入或肤色而被收取不同的价格，或被展示不同的报价或广告。 6park.com 6park.comIn the online world, however, such discrimination is rife, not only by large platforms but any number of companies. As data has become the oil of the digital economy, we’ve all become surveillance capitalists. 6park.com然而，在网络世界，这种歧视很普遍，不仅是大型平台在实施歧视，还有许多公司。随着数据成为数字经济的石油，我们都成了监控资本家。 6park.com 6park.comRegulators are beginning to take on the messy world of algorithmic pricing. The FTC, for example, has alleged in a recent case against Amazon that the online retailer earned $1bn from the use of a secret pricing algorithm that kept markets in various products artificially high. Amazon calls this a gross mischaracterization and says it stopped using the tool years ago. Whoever is in the right, such efforts take years to litigate. And in some ways, I think we have entered a period of fatigue around tech regulation that reflects years of incremental gains that have not really succeeded in bringing more transparency into digital markets as a whole. 6park.com监管机构正开始整顿混乱的算法定价世界。例如，美国联邦贸易委员会在最近一起针对亚马逊(Amazon)的案件中指称，这家在线零售商通过使用一种秘密定价算法，将各种产品的价格人为抬高，从中获利10亿美元。亚马逊称这是严重的错误描述，并表示多年前就停止使用该工具了。无论谁是对的，监管机构在这方面的努力都需要数年的时间才能提起诉讼。在某种程度上，我认为我们已经进入了一个科技监管疲劳期，这反映出多年来的渐进性进步，并没有真正成功地为整个数字市场带来更多的透明度。 6park.com 6park.comMaybe Europe’s Digital Markets Act, which went into effect last week, will begin to change that. Certainly it has already led to some behavioural changes on the part of the platform giants, as they are forced to give users more control over their data and open up their platforms more to competitors. 6park.com或许上周生效的欧洲《数字市场法》(Digital Markets Act)将开始改变这种状况。当然，它已经导致了平台巨头的一些行为改变，因为他们被强制要求让用户对自己的数据有更多的控制权，并向竞争对手更多地开放平台。 6park.com 6park.comBut I suspect that even more change — and more demands for tougher, clearer cut regulation — will come as online business models make their way into old-fashioned businesses where people are simply accustomed to much clearer rules. As consumers become more aware of how the tricks of surveillance capitalism are being used in businesses that they first used in the physical world, it may draw attention to the need for clear, straightforward rules — applying the existing laws of the physical world to online customer protection. 6park.com但我怀疑，随着在线商业模式进入人们已经习惯了清晰得多的规则的传统行业，将会出现更多的变化——以及对更严格、更清晰的监管的更多要求。随着消费者越来越意识到监控资本主义的手法是如何在他们最早熟悉的现实世界商业中使用的，这可能会使人们注意到需要明确、直接的规则——将现实世界的现有法律应用于在线客户保护。 6park.com 6park.comI’d love to see the FTC, for example, use its rulemaking power to stipulate a “thou shalt not discriminate” statue that makes it illegal to charge people different prices for different goods, no matter how and where they are buying them. What’s illegal in the physical world should also be illegal in the online world. This would put the onus on companies to prove that they are not causing harm, rather than forcing regulators to create a distinct and more complex system for a particular industry. 6park.com例如，我希望看到联邦贸易委员会利用其制定规则的权力，制定一项“不得歧视”的法规，规定对相同的商品收取不同的价格是非法的，无论人们是如何和在哪里购买的。在现实世界中非法的在网络世界中也应该是非法的。这将使企业有责任证明它们没有造成损害，而不是迫使监管机构为特定行业创建一个独特的、更复杂的体系。 6park.com 6park.comOnline or offline, all businesses should be playing by the same rules. 6park.com无论是线上还是线下，所有企业都应该遵守同样的规则。
Surge pricing is something that anyone who takes a ride share on a regular basis has become used to. Try calling an Uber or Lyft on a rainy day during the dinner hour or around the school pick-up or drop-off time and you’ll be paying more than your usual rate — sometimes a lot more. Yet when consumers are confronted with common online business models like “dynamic pricing” in the bricks-and-mortar world, they may revolt. Consider the recent consumer backlash after Wendy’s, the American fast-food chain, announced on an earnings call that they were considering surge pricing for burgers during peak demand — and had invested $20mn in new AI systems to do so. 6park.com
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