Dynamic pricing

Bapopik at AOL.COM Bapopik at AOL.COM
Sat Oct 14 14:35:21 UTC 2000


   Greeting from New York City, "the Very Tall Horse."

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DYNAMIC PRICING

   Remember a year ago, when I complained that my Amazon.com bio was there on
my home computer, but was not available on the NYU computer for a book to
which I had given a bad review?
   This is from the NEW YORK OBSERVER, Michael M. Thomas's Midas Watch, 16
October 2000, pg. 29, col. 6:

_I Smelled A Scam:_
_Amazon Gave Me_
_Dynamic Pricing_

(...) Here's how Mr. Krugman describes it: "Dynamic pricing...uses a
potential buyer's electronic fingerprint...to size up how likely he is to
balk if the price is high.  If the customer looks price-sensitive (Pg. 34,
col. 3--ed.), he gets a bargain; if he doesn't, he gets a premium."
   According to Mr. Davis, the scam (there seems no other word) was
discovered this way: "After reading on a message board assertions that
Amazon.com was selling DVDs at varying prices to different customers, one
customer...stripped out his PC's coookies and shopped as an anonymous
first-time customer...the price of one DVD dropped two bucks."

   If all of this is true, Amazon must die.

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SUBWAY SERIES

   I found "Subway Series" in September 1936.  It was not there for the first
three Yankees-Giants series in 1921, 1922, and 1923.
   In Saturday's (today's) NEW YORK TIMES, Roger Kahn states on the Opinion
page that the term was coined by Willard Mullin.
   The first cite that I found was not Willard Mullin's.  Can someone (maybe
an ADS member at the NY Times, but you know how helpful that can be) ask Mr.
Kahn his source?

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MORBIDLY OBESE

   Does OED have this "m"?
   From the INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, 13 October 2000, pg. 8, col. 2:

   Bariatric surgery is a remedy of last resort, offered only when all else
has failed, and only to the fattest of the fat.  Those are people who meet
the definition of morbidly obese: overweight by 100 pounds or more.

("Morbidly obese" is also used in an accompanying diagram--ed.)



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