COMPANIES ARE WAGING an invisible data war online. And your phone might be an unwitting soldier.
Retailers from Amazon and Walmart to tiny startups want to know what their competitors charge. Brick and mortar retailers can send people, sometimes called "mystery shoppers," to their competitors' stores to make notes on prices.
Online, there's no need to send people anywhere. But big retailers can sell millions of products, so it's not feasible to have workers browse each item and manually adjust prices. Instead, the companies employ software to scan rival websites and collect prices, a process called “scraping.” From there, the companies can adjust their own prices.
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