Price comparison portal

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A price comparison portal is a website on which consumers can find several online shops for a product they are looking for on one page in order to be able to compare offers .

Classification

In contrast to price agencies , Internet price comparisons are usually free of charge for online users. Comparison portals that compare prices of products such as B. Idealo, finance yourself i. d. Usually through forwarding fees such as pay per click , pay per sale and pay per lead . Comparison portals that offer tariffs for contract structures in everyday life such as B. Compare for electricity, gas, telephone, Internet or insurance, as well as hotel comparison portals are mainly financed by commissions that you receive from the provider if you are successful. Price comparison portals have been around since the 1990s. In the travel sector in particular, there have also been meta search engines since the mid-2000s that compare the results of various price comparison portals. These are mainly financed by forwarding fees. In the meantime, some price comparison portals have been further developed into evaluation portals which, in addition to the pure price comparison, map a ranking of the online shops corresponding to the user profile, the delivery capability, user opinions and test reports on quality, ecological sustainability and safety.

In addition to general price comparisons that compare products from a large number of different product categories, there are also specialized price comparison portals that only compare providers of one market segment such as computers , electronics or drugs and then often use additional special parameters for comparison.

While price comparisons mostly relate to items in online shops, so-called product search engines compare the offers of stationary retailers. This channel is increasingly being used by chain stores as an additional reach channel in addition to the distribution of brochures.

Most of the more than 1000 price comparison portals in Germany are so-called "white label price comparison portals", i. H. they access the database and possibly also the sorting algorithm of another comparison portal. These white label price comparison portals are often used within portal websites with a large community. The number of portals with their own database and their own sorting algorithm has declined sharply in recent years. A few providers are now very large, such as B. Booking when comparing hotels, Check 24 when comparing insurance and Verivox when comparing electricity and gas tariffs.

technology

One way of collecting price information is to read it in directly from the dealer. These are then compared with the database of the comparison service. The comparison requires a mix of information extraction , fuzzy logic and human judgment for assignment.

An alternative approach are web crawlers, which look for price information directly from the provider and feed it into a database. This means that data can also be fetched against the will of the retailer. A combination of these methods is also often used.

Comparison portals with a large reach are now automatically supplied with product information as part of search engine marketing activities. Tools (so-called feed engines) are used to read and send product data from web shops. Different price comparison portals place different demands on the data sets, which makes it necessary to structure the data accordingly before sending it.

Mobile apps

The spread of apps has increased sharply with the advent of newer smartphones . Basically, apps that are quick and easy to use help the breakthrough, as the customer is unwilling to type in a lot of information. That is why the latest price comparison products use mobile tagging . The camera is used to read in the image information .

Criticism in Germany

Comparison portals position themselves as a neutral entity and arouse the expectation among consumers that the information on the platform corresponds to this positioning. Since the ratings can influence purchase decisions, there is also a potential incentive to manipulate, because paying customers of the portals are dealers and business people. Experience shows that there are both authentic and manipulated ratings and reviews on some portals. Here manipulative designs with the use of random generators, so-called dark patterns , are used with the aim of misleading consumers. The business model of the portals is usually not recognizable to consumers. The Bundeskartellamt therefore carried out a consumer law sector inquiry into comparison portals from October 2017 to April 2019 in order to examine suspected violations of consumer law in the industry. To this end, 150 comparison portals from the travel, energy, insurance, telecommunications and finance service areas were surveyed and 36 examined in more detail. The suspicion of consumer law violations has been confirmed in some points. According to the Bundeskartellamt's findings, the following types of behavior in particular can mislead consumers:

  • In the hotel sector, commission payments by providers have an impact on the presentation of results preset by the comparison portal. Higher commission payments can possibly influence the position in the ranking.
  • Comparison portals in the hotel and insurance sectors sometimes only consider less than 50 percent of the market offers. It is not clear to the consumer which providers are not shown.
  • Many comparison portals work with references to allegedly limited availability, practically hardly realized advantages or supposed exclusive offers.
  • Numerous comparison portals do not create an independent comparison, but use data records from other portals.
  • Consumers are often not adequately informed about the practices of the comparison portals.

At EU level, a legally binding regulation is being negotiated under the name "New Deal for Consumers", which, among other things, provides for the disclosure of ranking criteria.

In view of the insolvencies of Teldafax , Flexstrom and BEV, the consumer center (VZBV) has asked the federal government to comprehensively define the responsibility of the comparison portals towards consumers and providers. The Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection is examining (as of February 2019) whether the Federal Network Agency can be strengthened in its supervisory function. As part of a study, the Federal Ministry has defined how consumer protection can be improved.

Individual evidence

  1. Bundeskartellamt - consumer protection - sector investigation comparison portals - final report. Retrieved May 29, 2019 .
  2. Bundeskartellamt - consumer protection - sector investigation comparison portals - final report. Retrieved May 29, 2019 .
  3. Test comparison portals. German Institute for Service Quality, August 6, 2012, accessed on August 20, 2014 .
  4. Michael Bernecker: Social Media Marketing: Strategies, Tips and Tricks for Practice . 3. Edition. johanna Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-937763-29-3 , p. 296 f .
  5. Product data marketing - a very special discipline. Retrieved May 22, 2019 .
  6. Consumer Center Bavaria eV: Falsified Reviews - Are Online Portals Fighting Them Effectively? , April 2018
  7. ^ Adrian Lobe: Dunkle Muster, Berliner Zeitung, January 9, 2020
  8. Bundeskartellamt - press releases - investigation into comparison portals - Bundeskartellamt wants to put an end to violations of consumer rights and demands new skills. Retrieved May 29, 2019 .
  9. ^ Theresa Dräbing: Invisible Ranking Lists , Berliner Zeitung March 18, 2018, page 6
  10. sueddeutsche.de February 7, 2019 / Hendrik Munsberg: State is checking stricter controls for Verivox and Check24

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