Price Comparison Service
On the internet, a price comparison service, also known as shopping comparison or price engine, allows individuals to see different lists of prices for specific products. Most price comparison services do not sell products themselves, but source prices from retailers from whom users can buy. In the UK, these services are growing at an annual rate of 30% to 50%. Price comparison services were initially implemented as client-side add-ins to the Netscape and Internet explorer browsers, and required that additional software be downloaded and installed. After these initial efforts, comparison shopping migrated to the server so that the service would be accessible to anyone with a browser. Mobile comparison shopping is a growing subset of comparison sites. Due to the nuances of mobile application development, different product strategies have been pursued. SMS-based products allow users to find product prices using SMS-based interaction mobile web applications allow users to browse mobile optimized websites and at the heavier end – native client applications installed on the device which offer features such as bar code scanning. Price comparison sites typically do not charge users anything to use the site. Instead, they are monetized through payments from retailers who are listed on the site. Depending on the particular business model of the comparison shopping site, retailers will either pay a flat fee to be included on the site or pay a fee each time a user clicks through to the retailer web site or pay every time a user completes a specified action. Comparison shopping sites obtain large product data feeds covering many different retailers from affiliate networks such as LinkShare and Commission Junction. There are also companies that specialize in data feed consolidation for the purpose of price comparison and charge users for accessing this data. This has since been expanded the technology for business consumers in recruitment. When products from these feeds are displayed on their sites they earn money each time a visitor clicks through to the Merchant’s site and buys something. Search results may be sorted by the amount of payment received from the merchants listed on the web site.