Research ways in which marketers protect against the consequences of online pricing errors and write a brief report summarizing what you learn.
The Internet is great for selling products and services. But don’t make a pricing mistake online! Intercontinental Hotels mistakenly priced rooms at one of its four-star hotels near Venice, Italy, for 1 euro per night instead of the actual price of 150 euros per night. Internet users booked 1,400 nights before the mistake was realized. Intercontinental Hotels honored the reservations at a cost of 90,000 euros to the company. In Taiwan, an eight-hour online pricing snafu on Dell’s Web site created tremendous problems for the company, such as 40,000 orders for a laptop computer priced at about one-fourth the intended price. Unlike Intercontinental Hotels, however, Dell refused to honor the erroneous price and offered a discount instead. The Taiwanese government disagreed, ordered Dell to honor orders for erroneously priced products, and fined the company.