Personalise the offer, not the base price.

I’m a big fan of personalised discounts. I’m much less comfortable with personalised pricing.

We already treat customers differently all the time.

New customers get welcome offers.

Loyal customers get rewards.

Someone who referred a friend might get a credit.

A customer who had a bad experience might get a gesture to win them back.

That all feels normal.

Because the underlying product price is still the product price.

Personalised discounts make sense

Different customers have different value to the business.

They also have different reasons to need an incentive.

A new customer may need a reason to take the first step.

A loyal customer may deserve recognition.

A customer who recommended somebody else has created value already.

A customer who had a poor experience may need reassurance that the business still wants them.

Using discounts or incentives around those situations makes sense to me.

In many cases, customers almost expect it.

The base price is different

I would not change the base selling price based on the individual customer.

Travel and service businesses have experimented with versions of this for years.

But imagine Tesco charging one customer more for bread because the system thinks their income is higher.

That would be national news.

The reaction would not be “clever personalisation”.

It would be “why am I being charged more than the person next to me?”

Dynamic pricing still has a place

Dynamic pricing itself is not automatically a problem.

Seasonality changes demand.

Stock positions change.

Supplier costs change.

Some products are worth more at certain times of year.

Make hay while the sun shines.

If demand is genuinely stronger and the market supports a higher price, that is normal commercial behaviour.

The uncomfortable bit is when the price changes because of who the customer is rather than what is happening in the market.

Don’t make customers feel watched

This is where personalisation can turn creepy very quickly.

If there is even a suspicion that the price changed because of what browser tabs someone had open, what device they use, where they live or what the system thinks they can afford, trust disappears fast.

The short-term margin gain is not worth making customers wonder whether the business is trying to squeeze them personally.

Personalisation should make the experience easier.

It should help the customer find the right product, get the right reassurance or receive the right incentive.

It should not feel like the merchant is quietly calculating the maximum amount they can extract from that person.

Keep the price stable. Personalise around it.

This is the line I’d draw.

Keep the base price consistent.

Then personalise the things around it.

Discounts.

Loyalty rewards.

Referral credit.

Recovery offers.

Delivery incentives.

Reassurance.

That still gives you plenty of room to treat customers differently without making the product itself feel unfairly priced.