This month, Walmart became the latest retailer to announce it’s replacing the price stickers in its aisles with electronic shelf labels. The new labels allow employees to change prices as often as every ten seconds.
“If it’s hot outside, we can raise the price of water and ice cream. If there’s something that’s close to the expiration date, we can lower the price — that’s the good news,” said Phil Lempert, a grocery industry analyst.
Jesus, I can’t imagine just coming out and saying this like it’s not fucking deranged to charge people more for WATER during a heat wave.
Also, the first time the price of something rises in the 5 minutes it takes for me to get my shopping done and get to the checkout, I’m taking a shit on the floor.
We’re gonna need some new regulations that require all price labels to have a date/time of last change so we know when they changed the prices.
There is a rule for gas stations that prices can only be changed once a day. Sounds like that would be a good start.
100% this. It would also prevent them from changing prices based on predictive analytics of the individual customer standing in front of the label — they will do this sooner or later, I guarantee it.
I’d love an NFC tag embedded in them that I could scan and see X weeks/months of history! But that level of transparency would only ever happen with regulation, and in my country (Canada) the grocer oligarchs own the politicians these days…
The first time the price of a good changes between the time I put it in my cart/basket and checkout, I will be starting a class-action lawsuit against corporate fraud.
Jesus, I can’t imagine just coming out and saying this like it’s not fucking deranged to charge people more for WATER during a heat wave.
and if there is a fire, we can raise prices of fire extinguishers, how cool is that?
I can’t wait for allergy season where they make the cost of my off the shelf medication absolutely unaffordable due to high demand!
I won’t say never, but my company has these and the tags aren’t able to be centrally updated meaning it would require manual intervention to reprice those items at all locations (and incorrect pricing is grounds for shutdown in some states) furthermore our software only does a pricebook load once a day so I can’t see that in our near future. I’m inclined to believe Walmart execs may be regurgitating a sales pitch more than what they’re capable of doing. That being said never say never and out techno dystopian future will be upon us soon.
In my country we’ve had these electronic labels for many years, using them was part of my first real job a decade ago. And here they definitely can be updated centrally, and in near real time.
I am sure, I’m just speaking about the ones my company uses. I don’t know much about them other than they aren’t able to be updated centrally. I worded the update part poorly, since the tag can update instantly but our registers don’t update pricing save for once a day.
Also, the first time the price of something rises in the 5 minutes it takes for me to get my shopping done and get to the checkout, I’m taking a shit on the floor.
I’m with you I’m saving my dump truck load for the conveyor belt at the register.
It helps that it’s an “industry analyst” and not someone from Walmart.
I can tell you, working in retail, there’s no way they’d jack up prices during a heatwave for water. They still gotta compete with other stores, and charging more would cause shoppers to go to where it’s cheaper.
Now if there’s shortages all over town and even the followers can’t keep up, I can see them fucking with prices. But they could do that right now if they wanted to. It’s not hard to adjust prices.
The real advantage of electronic labels is not having a crew to replace stacks and stacks of labels all over the store. The cost of labor and cost of the actual label sheets and printer maintenance to keep all that up to date, I’m guessing, is getting to the point where it’s cheaper to use electronics.
You say that like people would stop at multiple locations just to compare prices before buying water. Most people will just go wherever is most convenient, such as their usual supermarket. They’re not going to spend the time and money driving around to each supermarket in town.
Also, I’m pretty sure that jacking up prices for water string a heat wave is basically the definition of price gouging.
We’ve been seeing these electronic tags on sale items at Walmart for the past few years. It’s been a few months since the last time we were in the store, but last weekend we noticed ALL items now had small two-color OLED price tags on them. I don’t know if that means we’re just lucky enough to be one of the first to get the new tech, or that the chain had already started rolling them out well before the article, but they’re definitely out there. I’d actually love to get ahold of some just to play with them, although seeing the prices of OLEDs on ebay makes me wonder how any store is saving money by using them.
The standard elabels cost around $5 in quantity plus some for the hub that updates them, but you get it back eventually as nobody has to print and swap price labels any more.
Nice, thanks for the link. I might have to grab a couple to see what else I can do with them.
Aren’t those ePaper? Here in switzerland, they use ePaper displays (like the display of kindle devices)
Sorry, yes! I’ve got my head in another non-electronics project right now and was thinking of the wrong thing.
While the labels give retailers the ability to increase prices suddenly, Gallino doubts companies like Walmart will take advantage of the technology in that way. “To be honest, I don’t think that’s the underlying main driver of this,” Gallino said. “These are companies that tend to have a long-term relationship with their customers and I think the risk of frustrating them could be too risky, so I would be surprised if they try to do that.”
How to tell if an academic doesn’t get out enough.
Haha literally what planet do they live on?
Yeah every store values client loyalty, but pretending companies (e.g. Walmart for crissakes) want to be loyal to their customers should disqualify you from being called an “industry analyst”.
Probably the same guy that says inflation is “not a problem/getting better/under control”.
Are these people just available for hire by the media? Are they like professional witnesses for “two sides” reporting?
Inflation is largely not a problem, corporate price gouging accounts for the bulk of increases. Price gouging increases are an enormous fucking problem for people. Calling it inflation is their script, don’t adopt their language.
Consolidation or competitors that has been allowed almost unabated the last 25 years exacerbates the effects.
So, if these prices can be so easily updated, surely the retailers can now include tax in the listed price. It’s very simple automated math of course…
Ads are digital. The price ranges become digital. They have no excuse.
I’m sure you’ll still get those bootlickers defending the practice of not including tax, but they will make even less sense than before.
Wait, you’re telling me that the price on the shelf doesn’t include tax where you live?
It’s standard in the US for the listed price to not include any taxes.
And how about price comparison, is it mandatory for US supermarkets to display the price per unit based on a standard unit of measurement (such as per pound or per ounce or whatever metrics are used)?
Depends, generally no. Some supermarkets do as a company policy though and I choose to shop at those that do show per-unit pricing (and are also locally/employee owned)
Depends on the state
Ah ok, thanks.
No way this benefits the consumer.
Of course not. It lets their office or even corporate computers change the prices in real time whenever they feel like it. Hypothetically, you could pick something off a shelf where the digital signset $3, and by the time you walked it up to a register, it cost $4. It’s like changing the price of something in a shop simulation video game after the customer has picked it up, and now they have to pay $9,999.99 for a bag of potato chips.
That would be illegal. I worked on the software deployment of these devices in a store. If we increased the price, we’d automatically give the customer the lowest price in the last several hours.
The other problem was they were extremely low powered and low bandwidth and it would have killed the battery to update more than a few times a day.
So you’re saying there’s going to be a big influx of cash into small battery research and improving efficiency for tiny screens/low power WiFi?
And my country has price laws where tagged prices have to be honoured (I forget all the technicalities of the policy) - so if something scans up wrong, what stops the employee at service from changing the shelf price to reflect the wrong one while another employee walks over to verify with me? It would need a nefarious intent, which most minimum wage shop employees could care less about, but it’s a theoretical that could happen, especially on higher price items.
Surge pricing on Surge.
It makes you feel cool?
Imagine walking down the aisle, normal day, no thoughts about the prices or any of that.
Then one day you walk down the aisle but this time you forgot your phone in the car.
Different prices. Then some one walks is coming close from the other end of the aisle. The price changes. They walk past, nonplussed. A few seconds later, it switches back.
The year is 2047. Individually tracked pricing algorithms determine prices for each customer. I am the local water man, who everyone pays a small fee to go buy clean water, because my high volume of purchases means I get a slight discount. In only 34 more years I can pay off my 8th grade education and start thinking about a down payment on a double sleeping pod.
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I hope there’s pushback on this. They mention prices can change as often as 10 seconds. Meaning you can add something to your cart and by the time you check out the price has gone up. That seems like false advertising. Will the store associates have a way to override the cost if we make a fuss and ask them to price match the items to the cost when we added them to our carts?
It feels like this is another area where technology is advancing faster than our consumer protection laws. I suppose another thing to write your local representatives about. I’d hope legislation protecting a family grocery shopping would be an easy win for politicians and bipartisan.
We just need a law to prevent them from changing the prices during business hours or limit it to one change per day if they are open 24/7.
You don’t have them yet?
Oh, so when the crippling inflation from the money printing actually happens, they won’t even have to hire somebody to physically go around and change the prices every hour. Impressive.
Not only that but they can identify you by your cell phone and see if you are a high income person or big spender, and change the prices as you walk down the aisles.
More than that. They have your frequent shopper card and your online purchase history and everything else they’ve aggregated together. They know at what prices you purchase things, they know how much you shop around, they know the days of the week and times of day your more likely to make an impulse purchase. It’s lunch on Tuesday and your favorite snack suddenly costs five cents more because they’re moving the Overton window on your price points. It’s after work Friday and suddenly everything costs 10% more because they know it’s the end of the week and you’re tired and aren’t going to go to another store.
There’s not really a way to do that with this technology. These are just price tags on the shelf, so if they changed the price it would change it for everyone in the store.
This is not precisely accurate. These are individually addressible and can be commanded to change what’s displayed based on any arbitrary input, such as detection of a critical mass of apple products in that part of the store, or a device which is signed into a store account on the store app, accurate down to about 3 meters last time I looked at the state of presence analytics tech. So you absolutely could have 20% higher prices follow a person around a store if you wanted to.
But you don’t carry the sign with you. It stays at the shelf. Sure, they could build a system that tracks you everywhere in the store and marks what price they showed you and tells the register what price to display when you check out. They’ll try all that, but this won’t do it yet.
With that technology, no. But retailers track where you are in their stores. And even if you don’t bring your phone with you, they’re using facial recognition technology and will eventually try working with that.
So they probably have a good idea who you are. And they also have your purchase history - what you bought and at what price you bought it. They have your frequent shopper card history, your online purchases, everything they’ve put together from data aggregators.
They have all the pieces: they can track you in the store, they know the prices you’re willing to pay for things, and they can change the price as you walk down the aisle. Do you seriously think someone isn’t going to start putting all that together?
That was quite a segue into complaining about inflation.
This is illegal in my state. I’d be interested to see how it complies with other states’ price tag laws and labeling requirements.
Huh they’ve been in various brands and stores in Canada for atleast a few years. Surprised it didn’t start down there and make its way up here.
We already have this in Australia - my local supermarkets are all using electronic pricing labels - you cannot tell if prices have changed and they can literally change them whilst you are in the store - you cannot even tell when something is on special anymore as the large paper tags you used to see have all gone in the name of “saving the environment” - which is absolute garbage considering we are subjected to a grocery store duopoly in Australia who are renowned for price gouging….
I’ve often wondered what the “saving the environment” numbers of these actually look like. Is making and recycling paper shelf labels worse for the environment than a small device that’s a mix of plastics and electronics and has a battery that will eventually need replacing? Especially when I consider my local grocery store probably has thousands of these tags, all rolled out overnight one night, that will probably all need replacement batteries at similar intervals too.
I see different prices for each customer depending if the shelfs are full or nearly empty. Market rulez!1!! Or prices according to (estimated) customers income.
The race to the bottom continues imagine all the useful things we could be doing instead of this fucking shit just to take more from the pockets of people. Fuck this shit
Some of my local supermarkets have these already. The worst part is that they use real shitty, dark displays. It was always easy to see the price when it was black ink on white or yellow paper, but trying to check the price on what amounts to a calculator screen at ten paces is horrid. Doesn’t help that the displays are so much smaller than paper tags, and the stores like to put the “3 for $10” as the priority, meaning the actual unit price is millimetres tall.
dynamic pricing, perhaps. Depend on who is looking, the price on e-tag will display to match the ability to pay of that customer. If you are rich, then price increase.
Not sure how that would work at the checkout, unless you pay as you go.
