Dive Brief:

• E-commerce newcomer Jet.com's CEO Marc Lore admitted in an interview with Re/Code last week that the site’s prices aren't all that well displayed.

• The site show its price on an item and the comparison to Amazon’s price, but doesn’t indicate the extra savings, sometimes significant, that the consumer can accrue by buying through Jet.

• Jet says that one reason it doesn't show the discounted price on some items is because brands selling on Jet don't want to undercut other retailers (including sometimes themselves) selling the same goods at higher prices.

Dive Insight:

Many brands are reluctant to have extremely discounted prices advertised, and many discount retailers have found ways to entice shoppers through ads that don’t name names. But as a web-based retailer that is promising the lowest prices on the web across the board, Jet is in a peculiar predicament: it must show the item and its price for anyone to order. 

So to appease competing retailers and their merchandisers, Jet has compromised by making it a little difficult to see all the various ways — including dynamic pricing — that Jet shoppers can reduce their final price on their orders.

That in turn is making it difficult for Jet to prove that it does, indeed, have the lowest price on the web, even when it does. Perceptions are further muddled by Jet’s use of “plus” signs instead of “minus” signs to indicate additional savings, which are actually subtractions from the total purchase price.

Lore acknowledged the issues, telling Re/Code: “In either case, people are confused,” he said. “I think we’ll figure it out.”

But it’s not clear that price confusion is really Jet’s most vexing problem. Many, for example, are skeptical that the company can make it in the long run on such heavily discounted prices, with just a $50 annual membership fee to make it money. Plus, Amazon beats Jet on assortment. 

Perhaps worse than all that, consumers may not even be all that concerned about paying the very lowest price, experts have told Retail Dive.

While Jet from the get-go has been all about "being the cheapest kid on the block," says Shmuli Goldberg, director of marketing at price strategy firm Feedvisor.com, that’s no longer Amazon’s turf.

“While this is a unique value proposition, it may not be enough to sway some of Amazon's larger customers,” Goldberg says. “Amazon [has] pushed their Prime offering hard and fast to customers, with the key message of delivering additional value to the forefront, instead of the cheapest prices.”