June 3, 2024· 56 min

Corporations Learned The Maximum Amount They Can Charge For a Product

Orality
Model
50%

Speaker Breakdown

HostTracy Alloway(2,064 words)
M:29%
GuestDavid Dayen(3,252 words)
M:27%
GuestLindsay Owens(2,418 words)
M:28%

Oral Indicators

Agonistic27%
literally, completely, crazy
Engagement66%
you, our, your
Memory Aids100%
listen, now, like
Repetition100%
like (95x), know (94x), they (86x)
Parallelism100%
And I'm Tracy Alloway...., And then someone else goes, we..., But it is crazy....
Sound Patterns56%
58 question(s), alliteration: "markets move", alliteration: "barclays brief"
Formulaic Phrases6%
you know what, i mean, the bottom line

Literate Indicators

Hedging6%
could, probably, maybe
Passive Voice6%
was supposed, is deemed, been called
Abstract Nouns21%
investment, recommendation, conversation
Subordination8%
because, while, though
Sentence Length47%
Avg: 16.8 words/sentence
Word Complexity48%
investment, analyze, anticipate
Academic Markers0%
Impersonal Style34%
684 personal pronouns found
Descriptive Style88%
literally, completely, actually

Description

What's the price of a hamburger? Well, it depends. Are you making the purchase on the spot? Did you order ahead using an app? Are you a frequent customer of the burger chain? With inflation having surged at the fastest rate in roughly four decades, there's suddenly a lot more interest in how companies figure out the most that they can charge you for a given purchase at that moment in time. As it turns out, much of the economy is becoming like the airline industry, where there is no one price for a good, but rather a complex range of factors that go into what you're willing to pay. Thanks to algorithms, apps, personalized data, and a bevy of ancillary revenues, companies are increasingly learning how to not leave any pennies on the table. So how did this come about? What exactly is happening? And when did everything become gamified? On this episode we speak with Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, and David Dayen, the executive editor of The American Prospect. The two of them have put together a special episode of the magazine that's all about the world of pricing strategies, the tools companies use, and the industries that exist to help companies figure out what they can charge. We discuss what they learned and the impact this is having on the economy. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.