More price transparency for Austria

Galaxus is shedding light on the often murky world of pricing: in September, the online retailer with Swiss roots started disclosing the historical price development of its products in Switzerland and Germany. Since the launch of galaxus.at on 11 October, customers in Austria have also been benefiting from transparent prices.

Clicking on the price of a product or scrolling down will reveal a graph under the «Price development» tab. It shows how the product’s sales price has developed in recent months. «There’s a good reason for our transparency offensive: getting an idea of price trends has been cumbersome for consumers,» says Oliver Herren, founder and CIO. «That’s why we’re now disclosing how prices develop in our stores.» Galaxus.at has only just launched, so the comparison period is limited to a few weeks. Even so, taking a look at the price development chart is always worthwhile and will become more and more informative over time for shoppers in Austria.

Expensive today, affordable tomorrow

Sales prices at Galaxus are influenced the most by purchase prices, availability from suppliers and pricing by competitors. For example, if the product managers buy 100 screens, they will analyse the continuously updated quotation data from various suppliers and select the best offer. If they then buy another 100 screens a day later, the process is repeated. But the best offer available might still be more expensive or cheaper than 24 hours before. As a result, sales prices can also fluctuate in the short term.
By the way, monitoring competitors and the adjustment of sales prices are almost completely automated at Galaxus.

Personalised pricing: not a thing at Galaxus

This new price transparency also disproves the persistent rumour that Galaxus works with dynamic prices: «Personalised pricing models contradict our corporate philosophy,» says Florian Teuteberg, CEO of Digitec Galaxus. «We don’t change our prices just because someone uses an Apple device to browse our range or prefers to do their shopping on the go in the mountains. All visitors on galaxus.at always see the same price at the same time.» The same holds true for Galaxus in Germany and Switzerland.

The price chart does the trick

Customers in Switzerland and Germany find the new price charts accessible, useful and user-friendly. In addition, the transparent price overview seems to create trust and satisfaction. This was the result of a qualitative survey conducted in close cooperation with the University of Zurich. A recent representative survey carried out by the GfK polling institute in Switzerland came to similar conclusions: 66% of all respondents would like online retailers to display historical price trends transparently. Only 19% opposed the idea. Price transparency is particularly well received by the younger generation and men.

We hope that our Austrian customers will also appreciate our price transparency. Are you interested in how the prices develop in our store? Or is the price secondary to you, and you attach more importance to the quality of the products, a timely delivery and competent customer service? Thanks for letting us know in the comments!