I noticed this exact phenomenon when shopping for a new armchair recently. I found one I liked on Wayfair but wasn’t 100% sure yet, so I checked a few other sites. I stumbled across the same chair on Walmart under a different name for two thirds the price. When I got the chair, the box didn’t include an assembly manual (and the chair was very finnicky to assemble), so I did a bit more searching and found it on another site under yet another name, which provided a downloadable PDF assembly guide. Of course, the name on the assembly guide was also different, but it was the same chair.
Can you share the most egregious price markup example you’ve seen? Are there certain product categories with more or less price divergence?
P.s. I really like the “Load More” / “Load Forever” buttons. It’s a small but appreciated detail that gives me a feeling that you care. It really fits with the overall theme of your business: giving your customers options so they can choose what works for them. The trend of “corporation knows best” is getting really old, I'm glad to see people working to disrupt it.
What a crazy story! It makes me wonder if we can aggregate manuals, too.
Soon, we'll allow you to sort by discount you can search yourself. In the meantime, I did find a set of outdoor furniture selling for ~$7,000 on Pier 1 Imports that you could buy on Amazon for ~$900. (Pier 1 did have it "on sale" for ~40% off, which is another dark pattern that is common in the space.)
In general, I find items that get marked up the most are: outdoor furniture, mirrors, and simple metal-and-wood items like coffee tables, shelves or desks.
Oh, yes, the “sales”. I found a mattress pad on Wayfair that I was interested in, but I felt it a bit weird that it was “70% off”. I loaded the product page in the Wayback machine and found that it’s always between 50-75% off, and that the base price fluctuates by $20-40. Weird stuff.
The "sales," yes. Once we have enough price data to show how "sales" change over time, we might be able to help users plan their purchases. Some "sales" are evergreen, while some are episodic but also predictable.
I noticed this exact phenomenon when shopping for a new armchair recently. I found one I liked on Wayfair but wasn’t 100% sure yet, so I checked a few other sites. I stumbled across the same chair on Walmart under a different name for two thirds the price. When I got the chair, the box didn’t include an assembly manual (and the chair was very finnicky to assemble), so I did a bit more searching and found it on another site under yet another name, which provided a downloadable PDF assembly guide. Of course, the name on the assembly guide was also different, but it was the same chair.
Can you share the most egregious price markup example you’ve seen? Are there certain product categories with more or less price divergence?
P.s. I really like the “Load More” / “Load Forever” buttons. It’s a small but appreciated detail that gives me a feeling that you care. It really fits with the overall theme of your business: giving your customers options so they can choose what works for them. The trend of “corporation knows best” is getting really old, I'm glad to see people working to disrupt it.