Re: poly: Buying groceries

What if you have lines where you would have to pay extra to join,
and lines that give discounts? Then, with the same average time
of standing in line, the shoppers who value their time greater
than others, would save time, and the shoppers who value it less,
would save money. The store may promise to balance the average
prices. Or it may not. I don't know what the statistics of
people's preferences are, but one may assume distribution between
$3 and $50/hr, and do some calculations...
And of course, the stores could fluctuate the discounts and surcharges
depending on the number of people in the store, so that people who
don't value their time as much and don't care about rush hours, would
be motivated to shop at the times of lowest demand.

I wonder if such simple schemes are patentable.

Of course, shopping is not the only area where speed of access can
be moderated in this fashion...

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Alexander Chislenko <http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html>
<sasha@media.mit.edu> <sasha@lucifer.com> <sasha1@netcom.com>
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Received on Tue Nov 10 02:34:11 1998