Here are some examples of what I'm talking about:
- Mass events such as Burning Man, the Olympics, and the World Cup sell out tickets very quickly which forces fans to resort to scalping or using bots if they want to secure a spot
- Concerts of popular artists sell out very quickly which creates a massive scalping market
- Limited editions of clothing suffer from automated bots buying up and reselling almost all of their stock in a matter of seconds
- Popular restaurants sometimes require making a reservation several days in advance or don't take reservations and have everyone wait in line for a long time
- Daycares in Canada and the US frequently have waiting lists of several years which forces parents to sign up for one as soon as they conceive
I'm sure there are more examples of such practices that I'm not aware of. All of them could have addressed the difficulty of obtaining the product through some form of dynamic pricing - as demand goes up you increase the price, as demand goes down you decrease it. Various forms of auctions could also be used to determine the price, if required. This is how the world of airlines operates these days - planes are almost never sold out, but you might find that a ticket costs 10x the original price if you buy one right before departure.
- What's the name for such business policies in economic theory?
- Why would a business choose to follow such practices?
- Can this strategy actually result in higher profits over the long term or are businesses losing money by not using dynamic pricing?