The challenges of personalized pricing to competition and personal data protection law

Abstract

The development of smart electronic devices are enabling online businesses to collect any data related to the consumer's online activity. Such an extensive trove of consumer personal data can be used for “personalized pricing”. We have evaluated the challenges this form of price discrimination creates for competition and found that in jurisdictions such as the EU which prosecute exploitative abuses, the probability that personalized pricing might be assessed as an abuse of dominant position is high. Another issue raised by the collection and the processing of data for personalized pricing purposes is the growing invasion of privacy. In the EU, the General Data Protection Regulation foresees that personal data cannot be used without the consent of the consumer. As for online businesses processing personal data, they’d better stick to the provisions of the GDPR aiming to ensure greater transparency, if they are to avoid any risk of infringement of privacy law.