Title: "Crowd-assisted Search for Price Discrimination in E-Commerce: First results"
ABSTRACT
In this talk I'll go over some initial results from our measurement study aiming to identify signs of discriminatory practices in e-commerce. I'll present the tool we used to collect our data, analyze an initial dataset from some 300+ beta testers of the tool, and focus on instances of dynamic pricing observed in conjunction to different locations, retailers, and products. I'll later talk about the important challenges remaining for going from this initial study to a much more concrete and thorough understanding of the issue at a scale that is more representative of the actual practices of retailers at "Internet-scale". Finally, I'll try to connect this particular measurement study with other related important questions remaining unanswered in the general area of privacy economics, Internet advertising and e-commerce. Most of the material that I will present can be found in the following two articles:
J. Mikians, L. Gyarmati, V. Erramilli, N. Laoutaris, “Crowd-assisted Search for Price Discrimination in E-Commerce: First results,” ACM CoNEXT'13.
J. Mikians, L. Gyarmati, V. Erramilli, N. Laoutaris, “Detecting price and search discrimination on the Internet,” in Proc. of ACM HotNets'12.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Dr. Nikolaos Laoutaris is a senior researcher at the Internet research group of Telefonica Research in Barcelona. Prior to joining the Barcelona lab he was a postdoc fellow at Harvard University and a Marie Curie postdoc fellow at Boston University. He got his PhD in computer science from the University of Athens in 2004. In his latest work Nikolaos has been focusing on the economics of ISP interconnection (including issues of network neutrality) and the economics of privacy on the web and e-commerce. His recent work on detecting price discrimination in e-commerce has received coverage by the international press and has lead to collaboration and consultation with several legislative and regulatory bodies including the European Commission’s Directorate General on Internal Market (DG MARKT), the Federal Trade Committee in the US, and the Office of Fair Trade in UK. Prior to that Nikolaos had worked in various system, algorithmic, and performance evaluation aspects of computer networks and distributed systems, including: efficient inter-datacenter bulk transfers, energy-efficient distributed system design, content distribution for long tail content, transparent scaling of social networks, pricing of broadband services and ISP interconnection economics. He has published more than 60 publications in top-tier peer reviewed venues including ACM SIGCOMM, IEEE INFOCOM, ACM CoNEXT, ACM IMC, ACM SIGMETRICS, ACM PODC, WWW, ACM HotNets, ACM HotMobile, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (h-index of 24 according to Google Scholar). He has served multiple times in the technical program committees of most of the above-mentioned venues and has also been an associate editor for ACM Computer Communications Review, and Computer Networks Journal. He has filled more than 10 patents and has been granted 3. For more info:
http://www.tid.es/research/researchers/nikolaos-laoutaris
ABSTRACT
In this talk I'll go over some initial results from our measurement study aiming to identify signs of discriminatory practices in e-commerce. I'll present the tool we used to collect our data, analyze an initial dataset from some 300+ beta testers of the tool, and focus on instances of dynamic pricing observed in conjunction to different locations, retailers, and products. I'll later talk about the important challenges remaining for going from this initial study to a much more concrete and thorough understanding of the issue at a scale that is more representative of the actual practices of retailers at "Internet-scale". Finally, I'll try to connect this particular measurement study with other related important questions remaining unanswered in the general area of privacy economics, Internet advertising and e-commerce. Most of the material that I will present can be found in the following two articles:
J. Mikians, L. Gyarmati, V. Erramilli, N. Laoutaris, “Crowd-assisted Search for Price Discrimination in E-Commerce: First results,” ACM CoNEXT'13.
J. Mikians, L. Gyarmati, V. Erramilli, N. Laoutaris, “Detecting price and search discrimination on the Internet,” in Proc. of ACM HotNets'12.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Dr. Nikolaos Laoutaris is a senior researcher at the Internet research group of Telefonica Research in Barcelona. Prior to joining the Barcelona lab he was a postdoc fellow at Harvard University and a Marie Curie postdoc fellow at Boston University. He got his PhD in computer science from the University of Athens in 2004. In his latest work Nikolaos has been focusing on the economics of ISP interconnection (including issues of network neutrality) and the economics of privacy on the web and e-commerce. His recent work on detecting price discrimination in e-commerce has received coverage by the international press and has lead to collaboration and consultation with several legislative and regulatory bodies including the European Commission’s Directorate General on Internal Market (DG MARKT), the Federal Trade Committee in the US, and the Office of Fair Trade in UK. Prior to that Nikolaos had worked in various system, algorithmic, and performance evaluation aspects of computer networks and distributed systems, including: efficient inter-datacenter bulk transfers, energy-efficient distributed system design, content distribution for long tail content, transparent scaling of social networks, pricing of broadband services and ISP interconnection economics. He has published more than 60 publications in top-tier peer reviewed venues including ACM SIGCOMM, IEEE INFOCOM, ACM CoNEXT, ACM IMC, ACM SIGMETRICS, ACM PODC, WWW, ACM HotNets, ACM HotMobile, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (h-index of 24 according to Google Scholar). He has served multiple times in the technical program committees of most of the above-mentioned venues and has also been an associate editor for ACM Computer Communications Review, and Computer Networks Journal. He has filled more than 10 patents and has been granted 3. For more info: http://www.tid.es/research/researchers/nikolaos-laoutaris 
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