PriceSCAN.com was a US-based price comparison
website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...
, founded in 1997 by David Cost and Jeffrey Trester, alumni of the
Wharton School. A privately held company based in
Malvern,
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
, PriceSCAN was one of the first generation of "shopping bots" which included
Dealtime
Shopping.com is a price comparison service owned by eBay and operates websites in USA, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Australia. Shopping.com started out with the name DealTime.com which still operates as a related, but otherwise separate w ...
,
mySimon
Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest pub ...
and BottomDollar.
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History
From the outset PriceSCAN attempted to distinguish itself as serious instrument which consumers could use to achieve price transparency. Economists theorized that the
internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
, then in its infancy, might provide consumers with an unprecedented opportunity to see through the screen of retail prices to a seller's underlying cost. They could then use this information to judge whether the two are reasonably in line. "They can log on to price-comparison sites like PriceSCAN.com . . . to readily compare the prices and features . . . And every time a customer takes advantage of a cheaper price from an on-line discounter . . . she unlearns her long-held rules of thumb about how price and cost are related for the product she just purchased."
To this end, PriceSCAN set itself up as an "unbiased" price comparison engine. The website's FAQ stated "At PriceSCAN, we believe that consumers should have access to unbiased reporting on products and prices. It seems obvious to us that if a price guide restricts its listings to those vendors who have paid to be included, then its database more accurately reflects the source of its revenue, not necessarily the best products at the lowest price."
PriceSCAN has been both criticized and praised for this strategy; criticized for the potential loss of advertising revenue ("But PriceScan won't accept payment from merchants for a higher ranking in the search results. In fact, PriceScan plays up its policy of not doing that.")
and praised for the integrity of the strategy itself ("'They've always had more purity in search results,' says
ob Leathern of Jupiter Media Metrix 'They have a very consumer-friendly offer.'")
Since April 2011, the comparison service has been inactive; the company's Web page now reads simply "PriceSCAN.com, Inc. is a consumer and financial data technology company."
See also
*
Price Comparison Service
A comparison shopping website, sometimes called a price comparison website, price analysis tool, comparison shopping agent, shopbot, aggregator or comparison shopping engine, is a vertical search engine that shoppers use to filter and compare prod ...
References
External links
PriceSCANOfficial Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pricescan
Comparison shopping websites