Post on 30-May-2015
description
Price It
Have access to up-to-date prices of products and services to be smarter
consumers
Micro-workers supply the latest price information
Problem How to have access / find the most up-to-date prices
for products and services in developing countries? Food Gas Car repair Hair dresser etc
Problem
No place to go to find price information in developing countries People want to be smarter and educated shoppers
Why should a consumer buy things / pay for services at a higher price than they are?
Prices are not stable and the person in the middle is taking advantage
Difficult to conduct extensive research on prices Who can do the research? How long will it take? How
much will it cost? Discussion forums on deals and coupons are rare
Solution: Price It
• Micro-workers submit the latest price information
• Price It is a price query system that allows shoppers or companies to find up-to-date and real-time prices of products and services
• Prices are accessible through the web, mobile apps (different platforms), SMS and Voice to reach a wide audience
Advantages
• Users can find reliable price information quickly
• Shoppers can find best prices and avoid getting overcharged
• Companies can conduct basic price research on the ground easily without setting up an infrastructure
• Micro-workers can participate easily via SMS on their feature phones
• No need for an app through a smartphone, though an app front-end can be easily made to support the system
How It Works Example: Price of Fish
Micro-workers Users / Companies
Pharma X in Dakar is open from 8 am to 11 pm on Sunday 3/3/2012
Query: pharma dakar
Answer: X is open from 8 am to 11 pm on Sunday 3/3/2012
Date: 3/3/2012
Server
Web, mobile app, SMS or
Voice
SMS
Submission - Price of fish - Tuna
Query: What is the price of tuna in Dakar?
Answer: The average price of tuna is $5 in Dakar on 3/3/2012
LowestAverageHighest
Price
Location, type of
products / services
Subscription possible
How It Works: Users• Users submit price queries of products or services
via web, mobile apps, SMS or using voice
• Prices are organized by categories and locations at different levels of granularity (neighborhood, city, country)
• On the web and in the mobile app prices are mapped to increase visibility and graphs are accessible for specific periods of time
• Users can send one-time queries or subscribe to receive regular prices by SMS / Voice
Empowered consumers
Stable and lower prices
Checking the reliability of data by calling users and
sending alerts through apps and the web
How It Works: Micro-workers
• Micro-workers opt in to become reporters
• They select categories of products / services and locations they want to cover
• Selections are validated or some are proposed
• Micro-workers send daily prices and receive payments by SMS
• Some micro-workers receive regular requests for price submissions to cross-check the reliability of the submitted prices
Small payments to improve live
Checking the reliability of data with cross-
submissions
Revenue Model• Premium SMS / Voice for users (one-time queries)
and subscriptions
• Sponsored advertising in SMS / Voice
• For each SMS received on the network, the operators generally allow 2 SMS to be sent back
• Sponsored campaigns
• E.g., save energy, how to pay less for your phone bill
• Web site with advertising and premium service to access to more specific data
• Selling the data and base of users to consumer associations, market research firms, government agencies etc (with respect of privacy)
What we did already?• The presented idea extends on an app we
developed
• We developed an app called Yaboy that crowdsources the price of fish in Senegal
• Micro-work has the potential to make this idea successful
http://youtu.be/2VrkPJz3gkI