Workforce Bulletin

It has long been the case that certain sales and service providers increase or decrease consumer prices based on perceived data. A luxury item purveyor or home improvement contractor, for example, may look at a potential customer’s overall appearance, personal items such as a watch or purse, or their address or profession, to determine a quoted price. This practice is not just improper and deceitful—it is exploitative, and these perceived datapoints may not reflect the consumers’ actual purchasing power. Yet this type of variable pricing wasn’t an issue typically associated with general retail, until artificial intelligence (AI) arrived.