The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has initiated an investigation into several prominent companies concerning their usage of customer data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence for personalized pricing strategies.
Eight firms have received inquiries from the FTC, including Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase, Accenture, Task Software, McKinsey & Co., Revionics, Bloomreach, and Pros. The agency seeks to understand the implications of these pricing methods on privacy, competition, and consumer protection.
These companies utilize data-driven techniques known as “surveillance pricing” or “dynamic pricing,” which allow them to present varying prices for identical products based on customer characteristics and behavior, such as location, demographics, credit history, and online shopping patterns.
Many of the companies under investigation offer transaction, sales, and pricing services to large enterprises in the U.S. and worldwide. For instance, Task Software supports major hospitality entities, including McDonald’s and Starbucks, while Revionics provides pricing optimization solutions for retail giants such as Home Depot. Pros offers AI-focused pricing software and counts Nestlé, HP, and United Airlines among its clientele, and collaborates with Microsoft for technology development.
The FTC aims to clarify this “opaque market” that categorizes consumers and assigns targeted pricing to goods and services. FTC Chair Lina Khan highlighted concerns over how companies collecting personal data might exploit this information to impose higher prices. She emphasized the need for transparency regarding businesses that leverage detailed consumer data for surveillance pricing and noted that the inquiry aims to illuminate this complex pricing landscape.
The FTC is particularly interested in four specific areas: the types of surveillance pricing products and services offered by each company, their data collection methods, customer and sales data, and the impact of these practices on the prices consumers ultimately pay.