DCDeac
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- Mar 20, 2011
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Those are basically all promotions to get people in during less busy times to defray fixed costs of rents and utilities (plus competitive pressures). Not the same as surge pricing at all. Something analogous would be a seating fee trying to convince people to stay away on Friday and Saturday (and lure more cooks into the kitchen?). And it probably should be restricted to mid and low scale establishments because Uber's way more of a mass market service than a fancier DC restaurant. Again, show me Franklin Barbecue with some auction system instead of a four hour wait.
You're like trying to not understand that I'm saying the design of the pricing affects how people feel about it. Even your examples that I think aren't right are generally framed as discounts and not base price + surcharge for busy period. Look at how people complain about Ryanair and Spirit for their add-ons (which happen to be economically sound like surge pricing). Uber's pricing would be popular as shit if it was on an 87% "discount" most the time and an 8x surge was just base price.
Almost none of those examples are promotions. Even many happy hours are generally permanent and not short term promotions. All you're arguing is that other demand/supply situations that alter costs are "framed" differently. That's certainly true. But you can't argue it's not supply/demand based.
And it's extremely naive to say Uber's pricing would be more popular if prices were higher and then discounted. "Oh - that $20 billion company that just came out of nowhere to dominate a market - I know how to make them popular, charge a high price then discount it..."
I'm not "trying not to understand" you. I completely understand, I just think you're letting framing or buzz words like "surge" mess with what is a pretty simple and common practice. By the way, people may complain loudly, but they aren't complaining with their support of airlines like RyanAir or Southwest and companies like Uber. Success is not losing money hand over fist while nobody complains.