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- 27 Oct
Fuel price war drops fuel prices $1.20 in hours
The Ball State Daily News reported a recent fuel price war between two c-stores racing each other to the basement. A new Phillips 66 store kicked things off with a grand opening celebration and a fuel price of $3.19 for regular. The BP station across the street lowered their price by $.10. The war was on, and each c-store kept dropping their fuel price by $.10 increments back and forth before settling on $2.19. For a brief time, the BP station was priced as low $1.99. The lines of cars to enter the c-stores got so long the local police department had to be called in to direct traffic. By 2pm, the BP store raised its price back to $3.19.
This is a great example of what happens when a fuels pricing strategy goes haywire. Once fuel prices get to be so out of whack with the market, abnormal traffic patterns ensue. From a fuel price management perspective, lesson learned is there is no substitute for fuel pricing analysts to use wisdom when setting optimized fuel prices. There’s no such thing as an easy button – the market is too dynamic to allow automation to run amok and take the place of human wisdom.
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