Manufacturers are making price comparison more difficult!

A price comparison site makes it possible to compare a product on every detail in just one shot. Therefore, online retailers feel the need to reduce their prices of their products. But it's not so easy to compare products that are made exclusively for retailers. This is why many manufacturers are making different versions for different retailers, says Scot Wingo, CEO of Channel Advisor Corp.

For example, consumers can buy exactly the same digital camera in various (web) shops. The price will then be determined. But when manufacturers design a special model for a store, just a little different from the standard version, it makes it more difficult to compare, because then the price will not be decisive. Wingo expects that this will be increasingly visible in the consumer electronics category like digital cameras.

It might be interesting to see what the effects of this "mass customization" is between the manufacturer-retailer-comparison-consume relationship. This may be more difficult to compare products, but in fact I expect that it will increase the power of comparison sites.

25 jan, 2009