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Price It
1. Price It For consumers
Have access to up-to-date
prices of products and
services to be smarter
consumers
Micro-workers supply the
latest price information by
products and locations
SMS + Voice + App + Web
2. Problem
ďŹ
How to have access / find the most up-to-date
prices for products and services in developing
countries?
ďŹ
Food
ďŹ
Gas
ďŹ
Car repair
ďŹ
Hair dresser
ďŹ
etc
We concentrate on consumers
rather than sellers.
3. Problem
ďŹ
No place to go to find price information in
developing countries
ďŹ
People want to be smarter and educated shoppers
ďŹ
Why should a consumer buy things / pay for services at a
higher price than they are?
ďŹ
Prices are not stable and the person in the middle is
taking advantage
ďŹ
Difficult to conduct extensive research on prices
ďŹ
Who can do the research? How long will it take? How
much will it cost?
ďŹ
Discussion forums on deals and coupons are rare
4. Solution: Price It
⢠Micro-workers submit the latest price
information based on products and locations
⢠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
5. 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,
an app or the mobile web
6. How It Works
Example: Price of Fish
Location, type Subscription
Date: 3/3/2012
of products / or one-time
services query
Query: pharmais the
Query: What dakar
price of tuna in Dakar?
Micro-workers Users /
Server Companies
Pharma X in Dakar is Answer: X is open from
open from 8 am Price of
Submission - to 11 8 Answer: The average
am to 11 pm on
pm on -Sunday
fish Tuna price of tuna is $5 in
Sunday 3/3/2012
3/3/2012 Dakar on 3/3/2012
Lowest
Web, mobile Average
SMS, app, app, SMS or
mobile web Highest
Voice Price
7. 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
Checking the reliability of
Stable and Empowered data by calling users and
lower prices consumers sending surveys through
apps and the web
8. 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 based on the number of submissions
⢠Some micro-workers receive regular requests
for price submissions to cross-check the
reliability of the submitted prices
Small payments Checking the reliability of
to improve life data with cross-submissions
9. Revenue Model
⢠Micro-workers get a small amount of money submissions
⢠If they submit data 30 times they get a small token of appreciation (e.g., voucher)
⢠If they submit data 50 times they get another token of appreciation (e.g., voucher)
⢠If they submit data 100 times they are featured reporters and get an additional
stipend
⢠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. The second SMS contains advertising from local businesses.
⢠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
⢠App with advertising or in-app purchase 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)
10. Existing Solution to Future Solution
Growth using Micro-Workers
We want to scale our prototype that crowdsources
the price of fish in Senegal by using micro-workers
More products and more locations
11. 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
⢠We collect the price of different fishes in
different cities in Senegal
⢠Micro-work has the potential to make this idea
successful