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All You Can Pay: How Companies Use Our Data to Empty Our Wallets
You don't care who can access your data because you have nothing to hide. But what if corporations were using that data to control your decisions?
As millions of consumers carry on unaware, powerful corporations race to collect more and more data about our behaviors, needs, and desires. This massive trove of data represents one of the most valuable assets on the planet.
In All You Can Pay , Anna Bernasek and D. T. Mongan show how companies use what they know about you to determine how much you are willing to pay for everything you buy. From college tuition to plane tickets to groceries to medicine, companies already set varying prices based on intimate knowledge of individual wants and purchasing power. As the consumer age fades into history, rapidly changing prices and complex offers tailored to each individual are spreading like a fog over the free market. Data giants know everything about us before we enter stores or open our browsers. We may think that the Internet lets us find the best deals, but the extensive information companies have about us means that the price we see tends toward the maximum they know we can pay. In a momentous shift, the economics of information will turn our economy on its head. Fair bargaining is over.
As millions of consumers carry on unaware, powerful corporations race to collect more and more data about our behaviors, needs, and desires. This massive trove of data represents one of the most valuable assets on the planet.
In All You Can Pay , Anna Bernasek and D. T. Mongan show how companies use what they know about you to determine how much you are willing to pay for everything you buy. From college tuition to plane tickets to groceries to medicine, companies already set varying prices based on intimate knowledge of individual wants and purchasing power. As the consumer age fades into history, rapidly changing prices and complex offers tailored to each individual are spreading like a fog over the free market. Data giants know everything about us before we enter stores or open our browsers. We may think that the Internet lets us find the best deals, but the extensive information companies have about us means that the price we see tends toward the maximum they know we can pay. In a momentous shift, the economics of information will turn our economy on its head. Fair bargaining is over.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published May 26, 2015
5 people are currently reading
137 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 24, 2016
Almost like reading science fiction. The author imagined big data to be too powerful. Wild imagination and almost no data/research to back up. The book is also super repetitive.
March 14, 2022
A masterful take on a current and crucial issue. Ahead of its time.
September 21, 2024
没有什么新内容，不推荐。
August 18, 2017
Synopsis from Amazon:
While millions of consumers carry on unaware, powerful companies are racing to gain more knowledge and data than anyone, including any government, has ever had. The goal is to understand consumer behavior and desires, from mundane matters to our most private and intimate affairs. This massive trove of data represents an immense prize for these companies. In economic terms, it is one of the most valuable assets on the planet.
I’m inclined to be generous here because I already agreed with the authors’ thesis.
It’s long been one of my rants that those of us who use the internet (almost all of us), especially social media, are not the customer, but the product that is sliced, diced, and packaged for profit to the real customer, the advertisers and corporate giants. But, hey, I was just some Luddite crazy in a tin-foil hat. (Actually, no I’m not. I was a fairly early adapter, just not a whole-hearted one nor one naïve to the potential of abuse when law and ethics don’t keep up with technology.)
Bernasek and Morgan make a case for how data-mining by the Big Ten tech firms leads to granular monopolies, a situation in which so much is known about individual consumers that the information, offers and pricing for goods we receive are completely customized. Sound good? Not so fast. When everything is customized per data points, there is no way for the consumer to make direct comparisons among products or costs. The seller has all the information and power; the consumer is at their mercy. Every breadcrumb we leave in our use of cellphones, the internet, etc. gives private corporations one more piece of information about your unique situation and needs that they can leverage. The authors’ argue, quite convincingly, that the disparity of power between private corporations and consumers is a grave risk to the free market system.
Price discrimination is already common place (plane tickets, cell phone plans, healthcare, stores setting prices by ZIP code). With granular data, prices can be manipulated not per ZIP code or per socio-economic demographic, but per person. The technology exists, the methods are already in use. And, as the authors point out, user agreements and privacy policies are meaningless…even if anyone ever read them.
So, this is sort of a “preaching to the choir” book. Those who already feel trepidation about the lack of privacy protections and the ever-increasing interconnectivity of databases will feel vindicated. Those who don’t care if they are data-mined if it means they can get another “like” on Facebook probably still won’t care. Perhaps a few people will be a little more aware of how much of what was once considered personal and private we freely give away now.
While an interesting read, I thought the book would benefit from some editing. The authors repeat themselves, not just throughout the book, but from paragraph to paragraph. Had the text been vigorously edited, they could have easily cut 50 pages and made their argument stronger and more succinct. I think most readers interested in this subject are capable of understanding the concepts without the redundancy.
It would have been very easy for this material to veer into the land of the paranoid and melodramatic. It almost crossed that line a few times, but the authors steered it back to the reasonable, and the exaggerated example they made was deconstructed to show that the ability to go to the extreme already is in play.
While the authors do offer some ideas for curbing the power of the Big Ten to (let’s call it what it is) extort from consumers, I found their ideas a bit idealistic. Then again, I don’t see anyone offering up any better ideas.
I noted that while reading this book, the news broke that Amazon Web Services and Google are involved in the genome cataloging project. Yes, they want your genetic sequence information in the cloud. Not only will they know what you bought, where you go, how much you’re worth, what weird things you Googled, who your friends are, but they will know what you carry in your genes. So, really, even though this book just came out, parts of it are already obsolete. Goes to show that there really is no way for consumers to keep up with what Big Tech is up to…and pretty much made the authors’ arguments for them.
While millions of consumers carry on unaware, powerful companies are racing to gain more knowledge and data than anyone, including any government, has ever had. The goal is to understand consumer behavior and desires, from mundane matters to our most private and intimate affairs. This massive trove of data represents an immense prize for these companies. In economic terms, it is one of the most valuable assets on the planet.
I’m inclined to be generous here because I already agreed with the authors’ thesis.
It’s long been one of my rants that those of us who use the internet (almost all of us), especially social media, are not the customer, but the product that is sliced, diced, and packaged for profit to the real customer, the advertisers and corporate giants. But, hey, I was just some Luddite crazy in a tin-foil hat. (Actually, no I’m not. I was a fairly early adapter, just not a whole-hearted one nor one naïve to the potential of abuse when law and ethics don’t keep up with technology.)
Bernasek and Morgan make a case for how data-mining by the Big Ten tech firms leads to granular monopolies, a situation in which so much is known about individual consumers that the information, offers and pricing for goods we receive are completely customized. Sound good? Not so fast. When everything is customized per data points, there is no way for the consumer to make direct comparisons among products or costs. The seller has all the information and power; the consumer is at their mercy. Every breadcrumb we leave in our use of cellphones, the internet, etc. gives private corporations one more piece of information about your unique situation and needs that they can leverage. The authors’ argue, quite convincingly, that the disparity of power between private corporations and consumers is a grave risk to the free market system.
Price discrimination is already common place (plane tickets, cell phone plans, healthcare, stores setting prices by ZIP code). With granular data, prices can be manipulated not per ZIP code or per socio-economic demographic, but per person. The technology exists, the methods are already in use. And, as the authors point out, user agreements and privacy policies are meaningless…even if anyone ever read them.
So, this is sort of a “preaching to the choir” book. Those who already feel trepidation about the lack of privacy protections and the ever-increasing interconnectivity of databases will feel vindicated. Those who don’t care if they are data-mined if it means they can get another “like” on Facebook probably still won’t care. Perhaps a few people will be a little more aware of how much of what was once considered personal and private we freely give away now.
While an interesting read, I thought the book would benefit from some editing. The authors repeat themselves, not just throughout the book, but from paragraph to paragraph. Had the text been vigorously edited, they could have easily cut 50 pages and made their argument stronger and more succinct. I think most readers interested in this subject are capable of understanding the concepts without the redundancy.
It would have been very easy for this material to veer into the land of the paranoid and melodramatic. It almost crossed that line a few times, but the authors steered it back to the reasonable, and the exaggerated example they made was deconstructed to show that the ability to go to the extreme already is in play.
While the authors do offer some ideas for curbing the power of the Big Ten to (let’s call it what it is) extort from consumers, I found their ideas a bit idealistic. Then again, I don’t see anyone offering up any better ideas.
I noted that while reading this book, the news broke that Amazon Web Services and Google are involved in the genome cataloging project. Yes, they want your genetic sequence information in the cloud. Not only will they know what you bought, where you go, how much you’re worth, what weird things you Googled, who your friends are, but they will know what you carry in your genes. So, really, even though this book just came out, parts of it are already obsolete. Goes to show that there really is no way for consumers to keep up with what Big Tech is up to…and pretty much made the authors’ arguments for them.
September 14, 2016
An ominous though slightly repetitive tome about how biz use big data to avoid leaving any money on the table
August 6, 2015
2.5 stars. I wonder if the authors had the ambition for this to be a manifesto, but the writing was not strong enough. For the majority of the book I just kept thinking, "Don't give them any ideas!" as they kept listing ways that huge companies could abuse their data-gathering powers.
May 23, 2016
Eye opening and a tad frightening.
June 8, 2016
Good, but repetitive
Read
December 16, 2016it was useful to understand how analytics can be used
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews