Location: B16, Faculty of Law
Online shops can offer each website customer a different price - a practice called first degree price discrimination, or personalised pricing. An online shop can recognise a customer, for instance through a cookie, and categorise the customer as a rich or a poor person. The shop could, for instance, charge rich people higher prices. From an economic perspective, there are good arguments in favour of price discrimination. But many regard price discrimination as unfair or manipulative. This paper examines whether European data protection law applies to personalised pricing. Data protection law applies if personal data are processed. This paper argues that personalised pricing generally entails the processing of personal data. Therefore, data protection law generally applies to personalised pricing. That conclusion has several implications. For instance, data protection law requires a company to inform people about the purpose of processing their personal data. A company must inform customers if it personalises prices.
Frederik J. Zuiderveen Borgesius
University of Amsterdam - IViR Institute for Information Law
Frederik is a researcher at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) of the University of Amsterdam. His research interests include profiling, privacy, data protection law, freedom of expression, and discrimination. He has published widely on these topics. He regularly presents at national and international conferences, and has presented at the Dutch and the European Parliament. His book ‘Improving Privacy Protection in the Area of Behavioural Targeting’ was published in 2015 by Kluwer Law International. Before joining IViR, Frederik worked in the music industry for many years. He obtained his Research Master’s degree in Information Law at IViR, and studied for one semester at Hong Kong University. During his Master, he worked at SOLV Attorneys, a law firm dedicated to technology, media and communications. He also spent a semester at New York University doing research. He is a member of the editorial committee of the European Data Protection Law Review. He is also a member of the Meijers Committee, an independent group of experts in the field of European criminal, migration, refugee, privacy, non-discrimination and constitutional law. Frederik currently is working on the Personalized Communication project, a joint initiative of the IViR and the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR).
Twitter
Email