Dynamic personalized pricing is a real thing. Has been for ages. The old-fashioned techniques are coupons and loyalty cards, or just having higher prices in higher-end stores. Competition isn't nearly as perfect as you say. It's very common for high-end stores to sell identical items at higher prices and still sell plenty of them.

These days you can do a much better job if you have data about your prospective customer. This is not a hypothetical. For example, Target was found to charge higher prices in their app if your location was close to one of their stores. Orbits and Delta have both been found to offer personalized prices as well.

https://retailwire.com/discussion/will-targets-dynamic-prici...

https://www.fastsimon.com/ecommerce-wiki/personalization/dyn...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/personalized-pricing-ha...

Price fixing where everybody uses the same software is a real thing. RealPage recently settled a lawsuit over this.

You seem to be taking a very Libertarian approach where you assume economics 101 wins out over anything more complex, but if you look at what's actually going on in the world this is not the case.

> Dynamic personalized pricing is a real thing. Has been for ages.

The thing where you get a discount for making a below-average number of returns is also dynamic personalized pricing.

> Competition isn't nearly as perfect as you say. It's very common for high-end stores to sell identical items at higher prices and still sell plenty of them.

High-end stores are often selling more than just the product. Some people put a premium on buying from a place they trust not to carry low-quality products so they can save time needing to exclude those themselves, or to not provide them with a counterfeit or not make returns a hassle if there's something wrong with it when they get home. I mean how would you explain anyone buying from them otherwise?

> For example, Target was found to charge higher prices in their app if your location was close to one of their stores.

It's pretty obvious why they do this. It's more expensive to keep stock at a retail store with premium downtown real estate than a rural warehouse, but if you do then you'll get sales from customers who want to see the product before they buy it or who want to get it today instead of waiting for it to be shipped. So stores have to charge higher prices than websites to cover their higher costs.

Which creates a problem for a company that has both a store and a website. If they charge higher prices on their website than other websites, customers shopping at home will use another website. If they charge lower prices on their website, customers will come use the store as a showroom or take advantage of same-day store pickup but buy the product on their phone while in the store to get the website price, using the store without paying the higher costs of having a store. This is already putting many retail stores out of business because people will use the store as a showroom and then buy the same product on their phone from whatever website has the lowest price, but at least then the store has the advantage that you can walk out of there with the product instead of waiting for shipping.

Now, is raising the website price while you're in the store a good way to fix this? Maybe not, because it kind of pisses off the customers once someone figures it out and you get bad press. But that's the argument that they don't benefit from doing it, which is no reason to ban it. You don't have to punish companies for things the market will punish them for itself. Whereas if it's actually effective to help them keep the store open so that people continue to have a showroom and same-day pickup, why are we trying to stop this again?

> Price fixing where everybody uses the same software is a real thing. RealPage recently settled a lawsuit over this.

The fun thing about attempting to fix prices is that it's illegal regardless of whether it's effective. It's completely possible to net lose money by withholding units from the market to the net benefit of the landlords not using the same software, while simultaneously causing legal problems for yourself.

It turns out that "a fool and his money are soon parted" also applies to companies.

> You seem to be taking a very Libertarian approach where you assume economics 101 wins out over anything more complex, but if you look at what's actually going on in the world this is not the case.

The reason those things are taught in Econ 101 is that in the common case that's what happens. Competitive markets actually benefit customers.

The primary things you need from the government are a) to prohibit anti-competitive acts so that competition actually exists, b) to punish fraud and c) to price externalities imposed on people who aren't party to the transaction (e.g. environmental pollution).

You generally don't need (or want) the government to prohibit companies in a competitive market from doing things customers could avoid by just patronizing someone else. If many customers with 100+ options are knowingly choosing one you think they shouldn't, it's more often because they're getting something out of it than because the government is smarter and less corrupt than everyone else.