Pick the lowest price, and Jango zaps you to the site, ideally with an order form filled in. But Jango is not a model slave. Ask for something as generic as a 266MHz Pentium II with 64MB of RAM, and the bot returns with a bewildering hodgepodge, dejected, as if you were about to withhold its evening bread ration. The very idea of bots gives most Web retailers the heebie-jeebies. No longer is a prominent, well-advertised site enough to move product.
Bots level the playing field.
Retailers that sell goods widely available on the Net will have to compete on price or service alone. Banner ads and sucking up to search engines will do no good. Hits on those sites will shoot skyward. So will the rates those sites can charge advertisers. Retailers are also buyers.