More on Amazon pricing

You might remember a previous discussion of Amazon's pricing policy. I came across a further thread about it on...Amazon's own website! I hope that guy with the last comment is doing it for research purposes and not because he thinks it will save money.

Some theories from that discussion: currency fluctuation (which is plausible); stock position of different suppliers (not so much); testing of the demand curve via small price adjustments (quite an interesting hypothesis and certainly possible); and adjustments to changing demand (if true, would reveal a surprisingly detailed understanding of demand for individual books - but you never know).

Another possibility: it could be driven by competition - but as the market leader, it's less likely that Amazon adjusts its price to competitors than vice versa. Maybe then they deliberately make frequent pricing changes to stop competitors from finely undercutting them. Anyone know whether competitors can use Amazon's API to get realtime prices?

Latest update from my own shopping basket. I wonder if I should be quite so open about what books I'm buying...



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