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!
Just leave my gallons of ice cream sitting there.
They’ll probably require you to shop with your phone and scan shit as you go.
Yea, no, kiss my ass.
You don’t have the option to scan stuff as you go?
That’d be why they’re only just implemented old tech like electronic price tags
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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 on the state
Ah ok, thanks.
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)
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.
You don’t have them yet?
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.
Oh Ffs, what a fucking idiot, or liar, probably both.
Of course that’s the whole fucking point, you over-educated fucktard.
And people wonder why the average Joe mistrusts academia?
I mean there are clear savings advantages to switching to electronic tags. It takes like 30 to 100 man hours every week to swap out labels depending on store size. Thats like 20 to 50k a year you can save on labor by just having them automatically update each week.
Plus the tags/price strips right now aren’t free. Probably another 5k you save a year
Looks like the US is like 10 years behind the Europe.
But if I understand correctly those electronic shelf labels will be remote controlled. IoT?
They’ve been in use in the US in other retail outlets for about as long.
I suppose there was little rationalization for them in grocery stores until recently. Keep in mind grocery stores are massive chains, largely stocked by vendors - the store doesn’t own a huge portion of the product, they rent out space to vendors.
So there’s probably also the interaction between vendor and the chain - how the pricing update is managed.
Maybe someone more knowledgeable about how grocery works could chime in. I only have a cursory understanding. I wonder what their It systems look like, how they integrate/communicate with vendor systems.
I used to work for a company that did contract work for retail and grocery stores. For the most part, there isn’t a whole lot of direct integration, unless you’re talking about the huge chains and huge suppliers. Buyers make an order, that order gets tracked, shipped, added to inventory, and placed on the shelf.
Walmart is so huge and so nickel-and-dime that I’m sure they track and update prices based on a variety of factors, much like how Amazon does their micro-pricing stuff.
the Europe
Highly likely English isn’t their first language
I prefer to think of it like there is some fake Europe wannabe out there and the poster wanted to make sure people knew he was talking about the real Europe.
There is, it’s called UK.
This is illegal in my state. I’d be interested to see how it complies with other states’ price tag laws and labeling requirements.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
