Legal Regulation of Personalized Pricing in Digital Economy

In the digital economy, enterprises can more easily apply personalized pricing to consumers. The essence of personalized pricing is based on the segmentation of third-degree price discrimination, which is close to the first-degree price discrimination. The economic effects of personalized pricing are complex, and its regulation needs to adequately measure social welfare, consumer welfare and corporate welfare, and cannot be completely prohibited because of its potential misconduct. Currently, the main obstacle for the enterprises to implement personalized pricing on a large scale lies in the consumers’ price fairness perception and their reaction in the context of personalized pricing. Under China’s legal system, personalized pricing is not opposed in principle, and there are three main paths to its regulation. First, with regard to personal information protection, enterprises using personal data for personalized pricing should comply with the provisions of the Personal Information Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China regarding personal consent and automated decision-making. Second, in terms of maintaining the competitive order of the market, the Antimonopoly Law of the People’s Republic of China focuses on the overall effect of personalized pricing, and its regulation is centered on the anti-monopoly agreements reached by enterprises through algorithms and the abuse of dominant market position to impose differential treatment on trading counterparts.. Third, as for fair trade and consumer rights protection, the Price Law of the People’s Republic of China and other laws and regulations on price fraud and price discrimination are not real obstacles to personalized pricing. In order to protect the rights and interests of consumers, the regulation of personalized pricing should be to strengthen the obligation of enterprises to provide information, such as the provision of missing misrepresentation.