Price Mechamisms of Digital Economy: Divide Et Impera

The article analyses digital pricing strategies of the companies in the XXIst century. The detailed investigation of contemporary empirical research papers has shown that digital economy allows companies to use innovative tools in order to control consumers’ behaviour. But these new pricing instruments act as a double-edged sword. A great variety of goods and services with personalised price offers could attract additional demand and result in additional revenues. However, the innovative pricing schemes activate perceived price perceptions of the consumers. Experiments have demonstrated that if price levels, price differentiations or price dynamics are considered unfair, price scenarios have a negative impact on the clients’ loyalty and lead to a decrease in demand. A wide range of prices help companies elaborate obfuscation strategies, with low initial prices and increased additional fees being secretly included into the product bundle. Pricing and revenue optimization is based on widespread usage of AI and sophisticated technological advances that could manipulate consumers’ inattentiveness and carelessness. Although digital technologies and machine-learning could make possible detailed personalized prices on the basis of first-degree price discrimination, the real business models demonstrate prevalence of unitary prices. One reason is that nonlinear pricing with a complex double flat-rate and nonrecurring rate pricing plan still require additional IT expenditures. The other reason lies in competition area. The unitary pricing makes it easier to develop product differentiation that diminishes firms’ rivalry and as a result, escalate market prices. The innovative pricing formats, including price parity clauses, online recommendations systems, per-click fees, referral and registration fees, along with many others, contain anticompetitive potential. That is why they are under thorough monitoring of antitrust authorities all over the world.