In the era of digital economy, business operators often collect and utilize information such as consumers’ browsing history and past purchases to build user profiles and capture consumer needs. Based on such data, business operators would be able to provide personalized search results for their consumers. Arguably, this mode of operation is a boon to consumers and operators alike. It provides convenience and increases efficiency for the consumers, and their increased likelihood to purchase in turn generates profits and commercial returns for the business operators. In fact, the potential for personalized services is arguably one of the reasons driving the success of e-commerce.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) allow collecting and processing massive amounts of data obtained from people’s online records. Data is of particular importance regarding consumers and their activity in online markets because it allows access to (many) consumers’ personal and family characteristics, as well as prior consumption history. This, in turn, grants the ability to derive design proxies about preferences, interests, and personal valuations of goods and services. Naturally, this has significant economic impact.

Given the enormous size of the population of consumers, the use of big data, through AI, makes the approximation to individual consumer’s preferences, needs, concerns, and interests very accurate.

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.

The market in ancient Greece should be understood as a specific institutional construct, that of the city-state, which allowed its citizens to exercise private property rights guaranteed by law. By extension, free foreigners were also acknowledged these rights, which however extended to the private ownership of human beings (slavery). The city-state also created the conditions for an unusually high division of labour. Each city was a market space of its own, with its own rules and logic, which could include the control over sales margins and even sometimes the establishment of maximum prices for some perishable fresh goods. The network of hundreds of Greek city-states also created the conditions for the development of an original form of international market.