Are they simply showing pricier offers, or are they showing the exact same offers but with the prices raised? The former is annoying but not inherently evil, but the latter would be terrible.
We knew that _downward_ differential pricing worked (in terms of increasing conversions) - a popup saying "Hi, you're a return visitor to our website, we can discount this room rate 10% if you book today) always increased conversions.
We sure as hell _experimented_ to see if the decrease in conversions by bumping margins (and hence prices) up was worthwhile in terms of total profit.
I'd happily make an argument that if the first is morally "OK" then so is the secondβ¦
It't NOT differential pricing, that would be offering the same product top Mac users for more money.
They are instead offerent more expensive hotels to Mac users - on the reasonable assumption that Mac owners are higher spenders compared to somebody connecting from a free PC in a public library.
I presume you were downvoted because the responder specifically referred to the "latter" description: "or are they showing the exact same offers but with the prices raised".
The former, and it seems to vary by location. from the article:
[...] search results for hotels in cities including Las Vegas,
Orlando, Philadelphia and Boston were the same for both Macs and PCs.
A New York search turned up more expensive hotels for Mac users, but
only after the first 20 listed.
[...] A Mac search for a hotel in Miami Beach for two nights in July
displayed costlier boutique hotels on the first page of results, such
as Sagamore, the Art Hotel and the Boulan South Beach, that weren't
displayed on the PC's first page. Among hotels appearing in both searches,
some pricier options (such as the $212 Eden Roc Renaissance and the $397
Fontainebleau) were listed higher on the Mac. [...]
It would be helpful if that is, in fact, what you want. Owning a Mac is correlated with having more disposable income available, but that doesn't necessarily mean you want to get a costlier hotel room. I would hope they use other data points too, not just using a Mac, to decide whether the user would be amenable to pricier offers.
Owning a Mac is correlated with having more disposable income available
Or, owning a Mac may be positively correlated with having less disposable income, since the higher price of a Mac took more of your disposable income to purchase.
