Dynamic pricing: Fair market, surge, or gouge?

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A moving (price) target.

© MERCURY studio, Anjar G/stock.adobe.com; Photo illustration Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

In February 2024, Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner announced that the fast food chain would be testing a “dynamic pricing” strategy starting in 2025. The (mostly negative) public response, particularly on social media where the topic went viral, was swift and harsh.

Several media outlets compared Wendy’s pricing strategy with “surge pricing,” a term typically associated with rideshare companies such as Uber (UBER) and Lyft (LYFT). Based on that presumption, detractors warned that during peak hours, such as the lunch hour, the price of a burger, fries, and soda combo might double or even triple—similar to what sometimes happens when you’re hailing an Uber ride during a thunderstorm, or buying an in-demand concert ticket through Ticketmaster or a product reseller (“scalper”).

So is dynamic pricing another term for “price gouging,” or is it a potentially beneficial, yet misunderstood, strategy based on the classic economic fundamentals of supply and demand?

Dynamic pricing is a strategy in which a company adjusts its product prices based on market demand, supply changes, and other external and internal factors:

Dynamic pricing essentially responds to the ebbs and flows of a free market economy. But if this strategy closely follows the fluctuations of economic factors, why do many people see it as exploitative and unfair?

Dynamic pricing is not the same as surge pricing. Contrary to popular misunderstanding, dynamic pricing isn’t just about raising prices when demand exceeds supply. That’s “surge pricing.” Dynamic pricing also includes lowering prices, both when demand declines and during supply overages.

For example, when a department store offers 40% off, or a car dealer offers a $5,000 “factory rebate” on all new vehicles, these are also forms of dynamic pricing—but in a good way for you as a consumer.

In other words, dynamic pricing is not surge pricing, even though the terms are sometimes used synonymously.

Companies can certainly price gouge the consumer under the guise of dynamic pricing. Any product, regardless of pricing strategy, can be priced in a way that inflates its market value.

But this brings up a complicated and long-debated topic. What is market value, anyway? Who or what defines it, and how? If supply and demand are constantly in flux, then how can there be a fixed benchmark for market value, let alone a way to determine when it’s inflated and by how much?

For most products, the market itself—aka, Adam Smith’s invisible hand—is what resolves the pricing problems that can stem from dynamic price surges. If a company’s product is too expensive, customers are likely to check out one of its competitors for cheaper prices. If the product is too expensive everywhere, then customers might choose not to buy it, or they might try to find a less expensive substitute.

As the saying goes, the cure for high prices is high prices. When consumption is reduced, it will likely bring demand back down to supply levels, causing prices to eventually decline.

What are the good and bad sides of dynamic pricing? It depends, in part, on your perspective. Companies seek to maximize profits without affecting the customer experience. Consumers want low prices, but not so low that the company experiences a shortage. Here are a few potential side effects of dynamic pricing.

Negative customer response. It almost doesn’t matter whether a customer’s understanding of dynamic pricing is accurate or misinformed. Customers who are loss averse may react more strongly to rising prices during peak demand than to declining prices when demand is soft. Negative responses might also lead to customer distrust or a reduction in customer loyalty.

Opportunity cost due to bad data. Gathering and processing real-time data is a complex operation that’s prone to error. If a company’s algorithm prices a product based on poor or inaccurate data, then it can lead to missed opportunities (aka opportunity cost). Setting a price too high can discourage customers and leave the company with excess inventory—a problem if that inventory is perishable (e.g., food that loses its freshness or a seat on an airplane that has no value if it’s empty at takeoff). Conversely, pricing products lower than necessary can lead to shortages (e.g., rent-controlled apartments or pharmaceutical price caps) and decreased profitability among producers.

Immediate and actionable information flow. In a dynamic pricing environment, the price mechanism is less restrained, giving companies more knowledge of their consumers, supply chain and value chain operations, and the overall supply and demand conditions in their market or industry.

Fine-tuned price discovery (i.e., a real-time “invisible hand” balancing supply and demand). Inflated product prices can dissuade consumers from making purchases. This can play out in a couple of ways:

As long as a company doesn’t advertise its prices to be lower than they really are, customers can anticipate bargain-basement prices at some times and nosebleed prices at other times. Following the ebbs and flows of supply and demand may not always result in a perfect balance, but arguably, that’s the nature of economic activity in a free market.

Dynamic pricing is nothing new:

Although the debate over dynamic pricing centers on the vague idea of a “fair price,” nobody can truly measure what a fair price might be—aside from input and production costs, which are always in a cycle of imbalance and equilibrium.

What dynamic pricing does, however, is spur consumers to act, one way or another. And their collective actions—whether to buy a product, seek a better price or a product substitute, or hold off on purchases altogether—will be the major factor and “invisible hand” that ultimately rewards or punishes a business or an industry.