Contract law revisited: Algorithmic pricing and the notion of contractual fairness

Abstract

Contracts have been an essential part of our lives for centuries, and it is only natural that they would be affected by the inflation of technology surrounding us. With the big data revolution in the market, algorithmic pricing schemes have been introduced, which provides a price for a good and/or service according to the buyer/consumer data that has been mined by the algorithm. However, this rather new phenomenon brings back an age-old debate on contractual fairness and whether it is still suited for the 21st century.Fair price (substantive fairness) has been debated for many centuries and has been evolved into a more comprehensive theory of contractual fairness, which includes fairness in the proceeding of the contract (procedural fairness). However, algorithmic pricing complicates it further with another dimension to issue: autonomy over personal data.This paper aims to contribute to the debate on price fairness in algorithmic pricing in a contract law backdrop while attempting to broaden contractual justice discussions with a contemporary problem.