This chapter deals with a market arrangement at a moment of uncertainty and concern around its continued existence. This arrangement is what I call the impersonal price, or a system of impersonal retail prices, elsewhere also referred to as a system of fixed prices. These phrases describe markets where prices are visible, homogeneous across customers, and non-negotiable. As the chapter shows, impersonal retail prices did not just happen. They are the product of complex interactions between legal regulation, material-technical arrangements, and economic theories, as mobilized in different historical contexts to different socio-political and economic ends.

Of the many concerns triggered by the rapid growth of digital commerce and the expansion of the data-based economy, price personalization occupies a prominent yet peculiar position. For many firms, the availability of big data and refined algorithmic tools has opened unprecedented avenues to learn about consumers’ financial and personal standing, market preferences, and transactional behaviour patterns. Building on these insights, firms have (at least to some degree) obtained an ability to make behavioural predictions about the future conduct of their clients, including their interest in a particular assortment of products, responsiveness to certain forms of advertising, and – not least importantly – their willingness to pay a certain price.