One of the hottest new trends today is developing pricing effectiveness solutions. Good pricing effectiveness comes from determining a person’s willingness to pay. Companies specialize in “revenue management” by tracking a customer’s willingness-to-pay and helping a company to optimize its revenue stream based on that willingness. For instance, in the case of that airline passenger, one person absolutely needed to get somewhere at the last minute and therefore he was willing to pay almost anything for a seat on that plane. And the other person was looking for a bargain and only flew because the flight was cheap. Just like the vender in the stall in the 3rd world, if you could determine the person’s desire level, theoretically you could charge the first person a much higher rate while simultaneously charging the second person much less.  Unfortunately for companies (but fortunately for consumers) companies are not mind-readers so they can’t squeeze the absolute last dollar out of you… Or can they?