Buying Tips from the computer

Buying Tips from the computer


A start-up customers will use a prediction software to help buy new gadgets always at the best prices.

It's a classic question that arises every friend of new products from the technology sector: When is the right time to strike? Those who buy early can, but brag to belong to the "early adopters" and enjoy a new device for longer. But here you pay sums on it forever.

One recent example is the computer giant HP. The recently announced it will withdraw from the tablet business and give up even with its own smartphone operating system. Those who have HP touchpad to launch worried that the U.S. paid $ 499. Meanwhile, there sellout: customers have to spend $ 149 just for the model with 32 gigabytes, which are 16-gigabyte device is available for $ 99. 350,000 customers should have bought a single weekend. (Also in Germany the prices were lowered.)

"People always have the feeling of being ripped off," said Oren Etzioni, chief technology officer and co-founder of start-ups Decide, an Internet company that tries to customers take delivery of the decision of when it pays to buy technology and when is it better to wait. In the forecast model price trends are considered as well as news, rumors and the latest technical specifications. In case the customers HP touchpad would not (yet), nothing helped: Tablet computers are not yet available to the categories of equipment, for a variety of other consumer products such as digital cameras.

Decide before the start of Etzioni founded Farecast had been - a company that tried, the best time to buy airline tickets to determine it was acquired in 2008 by Microsoft.

The prediction of prices for consumer electronics is more complicated. Flight tickets will be used once, gadgets, which will keep for many months and used. People do not want to wait too long to take, so they do not have to be content with outdated equipment, says Etzioni. "Since it is often less about the price. We believe that only a limited number of customers really want to wait."

For this reason, calculate the Decide algorithms not only new models and devices with one already published. There are also special cases considered. "It sometimes happens that new devices are even cheaper than their predecessors," says Etzioni.

Microsoft is also interested in following the purchase of Farecast on the topic. The Group's own search engine Bing will also dominate price forecasts. At the conference, "Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining", San Diego researchers demonstrated the company recently launched a software, the real value of a product for customers to calculate. "It is einzukalkulieren important that the user while waiting for better prices even use a desired device simply can not," said Microsoft scientist Samuel Ieong.

Ieong and colleagues examined this price and sales data from market research firm NPD January 2005 to September 2008 to determine the best period for which products you should like camcorders, buy digital cameras, printers and TVs. It came out that had durable goods such as printer prices fairly stable, strong in products such as specialty cameras, but fluctuated. The price forecasting difficult.

Etzioni is certain that such algorithms could have in the future of Decide great influence on the market for consumer electronics. Customers would not learn this only when a purchase is worthwhile, but also take into account other factors such as energy consumption over a longer period. Sometimes buying a new unit that is worthwhile not only because of the purchase price. "Anyone who buys a refrigerator and used these for many years, to help even small efficiency gains."