6mo ago

Grocery store prices are changing faster than ever before — literally. This month, Walmart became the latest retailer to announce it’s replacing the price stickers in its aisles with electronic shelf.

www.npr.org /2024/06/17/nx-s1-5009271/electronic-shelf-labels-prices-walmart-grocery-store

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.

Apps like Uber already use surge pricing, in which higher demand leads to higher prices in real time. Companies across industries have caused controversy with talk of implementing surge pricing, with fast-food restaurant Wendy’s making headlines most recently. Electronic shelf labels allow the same strategy to be applied at grocery stores, but are not the only reason why retailers may make the switch.

Technology @beehaw.org

A supermarket trip may soon look different, thanks to electronic shelf labels

www.npr.org /2024/06/17/nx-s1-5009271/electronic-shelf-labels-prices-walmart-grocery-store

45 43

Technology @lemmy.world

A supermarket trip may soon look different, thanks to electronic shelf labels

www.npr.org /2024/06/17/nx-s1-5009271/electronic-shelf-labels-prices-walmart-grocery-store

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140 comments

If it’s hot outside we can raise the price of water…”
Holy fuck dude that’s some endgame capitalism right there.
- Is it price gouging if there is a heat advisory is my question, and how enforceable is that. For water it's just cruel, especially in places with little access to drinkable tap water.
  
  The fucked up thing is that it'll have to get legislated. Like there will be a bill that says you can't price gouge on water in a heat advisory.
  And the more fucked up thing is that it'll be controversial.
  And then you realize that this is why we can't have nice things. We can't all just play nice together on our own, no, as much as we all claim to hate daddy government, we need him to come down and remind us that shit like this is anti-human and start defining rules that really should have just been common decency in the first place.
  Like how I feel when I tell my younger kid to stop throwing forks in the house. I shouldn't have to tell you that. I told you yesterday, and the day before. And I told you three times today to stop throwing things. And then I get forked in the arse.
- Yes. That is actually the point. MUST maximize that profit!
  Airlines do this now, as does Uber.
  The tech is only just catching up for retail. This is end game capitalism hope you enjoyed the ride.
- They really will just fuck us to death if we let them.
  
  One dose of capitalism please.
  
  name checks out
- It's Walmart. They are one of the scummiest around. They nickel and dime everything and everyone.
- Always has been. Do you know the story of Jacob and Esau and the cost of a lentil stew for a starving brother?
- My answer to Walmart's greed is... Some of us don't buy bottled water, so feel free to raise it to $100 a bottle.
  
  right, but some people do, and by encouraging this, you're fucking over your fellow humans.
  edit: There are also situations where you don't have a choice but to buy water bottles. maybe you're out of your home, your personal bottle is empty, and it's hot out. maybe you're at the airport. sure you could drink from water fountains, but what if they're nowhere near you? or what if they don't work?
- It's the rollercoaster tycoon umbrella strat all over again
- Water is free/cheap though. They have a water fountain. You have plumbing into your living space with a virtually limitless supply.

So what if you placed some water in your cart, walked around and then they raise the price before you check out? How does that work?
- They're going to end up with a bunch of people complaining to the manager about the price not matching the sign, which already happens, but it'll be 10x worse.
  
  Good. Annoy the managers until they get rid of this shit
  
  They'll price check it and find the new price. The customer will be blamed.
- There are laws in many states governing many items clearly articulating that the price cannot change during business hours/within a business day.
  Hopefully the FTC revs up it's engines like it's been doing.
  
  Hopefully the FTC revs up it's engines like it's been doing.
  That depends on who is in charge of the country at any given time. Three-letter entities have a way of being hamstrung during conservative administrations.
  The next time conservatives have control, though, it will likely be permanent. The FTC would certainly be dismantled.
  
  Shall we okay a game of "guess which shit hole states don't have this"?
  
  There are laws in many states
  For now...
- Then you pour it out at the checkout and walk out without paying.

Just wait until they track your phone in the stores and tie it to demographics like where you live and profession to build a financial profile to estimate how much you are able to pay. As you walk down aisles, the prices change to your price to gouge out every possible penny from you.
- The true cyberpunk dystopia. They ultimately want to keep you as close to destitute without actually being bankrupt as possible, that way they extract as much as possible from you at all times for as long as they can.
  Capitalism will always try to get as many people as possible, to pay as much as possible, for as little as possible.
- I can see this happening 100%. It's already kind of a thing in home renovation and construction. Some businesses will charge you a higher hourly labor rate if your materials are expensive. Installing tile or whatever should be the same labor rate, but they assume customers buying expensive materials "must be rich" and won't blink at paying more for labor, too. They don't all do this, of course, but it's something to watch out for (and one of many reasons you should always get multiple estimates from different contractors).
  
  Expensive tile tends to be fragile, and its assumed the customer will expect more precise work, so not a great analogy
- Sounds like a market to pay people to shop for you.
  
  But don't pay them too much.
- This as exactly my thought. It's not crazy to imagine this when I know for a fact systems exist in supermarkets to calculate optimal prices in different stores, based on the size of the store, the demographics of the area it's in etc
- This is just a great opportunity for a poor person to rent their phone out, you gotta look for the silver lining in the capitalism!
- Time to design a phone faraday cage for grocery shopping.

If it’s hot outside, we can raise the price of water and ice cream.
If people are starving after a natural disaster, we can raise the price of everything because they're desperate and have no alternatives.
- Are we to judge simple supply and demand now? If they haven't been smart enough to save for a disaster, then perhaps they deserve what they get. If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Bah. Humbug. A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every natural disaster.
  /S
  
  the hottest

How is this not considered false advertising? You go to a shelf and see your favorite snack on sale, you grab it. Finish the rest of your selections and go to check out.
By the time you get there the price of your snack is no longer what was shown on the shelf.
If it isn't false advertising, it's bait and switch.
- It's worse than that, if they have shelf scanners they could see cans of peas just went from 4 to 3 so they then increase price because of the demand you yourself just created.
- Well AI set the price just for you! It is custom based on how much money and how impulsive you are.
  Works great to fix rents and wages... why not your avocado!?
  
  Except it's illegal and has precident being illegal with rent
- Having just recently worked at a grocery store, they're likely shooting for being able to change prices daily without having to pay 3 extra workers to change all the tags in the grocery store. So it likely wont change during the day, for the reasons you listed, but any chance they get to up the price without a percieved loss in customers, they'll just hit a button and bam, jacked the price by a dollar
- They're not meant to be used to change prices on the fly. The 10 minute window is literally just so you can fix mistakes like typos, in case it says 179.9 when you meant to put 17.99. Like when a customer comes in, and says "the advertising said this is supposed to be $5 this weekend, but the price tag still says its $8, what gives?" Then you can go to the back, change the price to $5, and it will update all the tags for this item on the fly. There is no limitation stating you need to wait 24 hours or however long you think would be fair. You can also use it to schedule sales that start at a specific time of day, fx food items that are made to be consumed on the same day might get cheaper near closing time.
  Price gouging is still price gouging, and generally, at least where im from, there is a legal obligation that the customer can rely on the listed price at the time they pick up the item. I can't imagine it's that much different in the us?
  Source: l literally used to program the software that's used for these things
  
  Though I agree that it's likely not how they were designed, but capitalists must do a capitalism.
  When the fine for doing exactly this, is a small portion of the increased profits (and only after it's discovered, and prosecuted), then it's just another way to do said capitalism.

“If it’s hot outside, we can raise the price of water and ice cream.”
Dude actually said that out loud. Wild. Teach me how to give that little of a fuck.
- You know what the world needs? Surge pricing on water.
  --No one, ever.
  
  I'm sure Nestle has already thought of that.
- They have a fiduciary responsibility to charge people more when they’re willing to pay more because they’re literally dying of thirst.
  Or some such bullshit.
  
  I just gotta say tho, Fuck Phil; no cap.
  Did I use it right?
- So dumb. Could have said just ice cream and the message would carry better
- And the said that it's a good thing.
  Capitalism is a disease.

Ooooo. Can't wait till a hurricane is coming and they raise the price of water and canned food.
I wonder how much price gouging will be permitted. If they can raise the price of water when it's hot then could they raise it "just enough" to not get in trouble with the state when a hurricane is coming
- Price gouging is effectively legal in red states. Conservatives do not prosecute businesses for harming people for profit.
  
  Price gouging is effectively legal in the US....
  Not sure where you live but it happens everywhere and every time there is a good opportunity to make money.

On the shelves, surge pricing.
Weekend evenings, pizza and beer prices skyrocket. Rest of the week evenings, staples are higher like beef, chicken, etc. Holidays, Turkey prices go up the closer to thanksgiving you get. Plastic cups, paper plates, grilling necessities go up approaching the 4th of July.
“Oh, but it’s just shortages…”
- Price gouging by any other name if still illegal. A heatwave, especially in this escalating climate crisis, is no different than a hurricane or other natural disaster and many places already have laws to deal with the ethics of raising prices under those circumstances.

“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.
One half of that is good news for one party and bad news for the other and the other half is the opposite.
I think this person needs a psychological evaluation.
- If there’s something that’s close to the expiration date, we can lower the price — that’s the good news
  Except we know they would rather throw that shit out than sell it cheaper... maybe they will donate it.
  
  I can't speak for everywhere, but the Kroger here sells meat close to its expiration date for low prices. Of course, you often have to use it that night in order to be safe, but...
  
  I was never a grocer, but I worked in the catering industry for almost 10 years (which, to be fair, is a very different industry that just happens to have some overlap). Standard procedure is to throw away practically everything that can't be reused on another event. I talked to the higher-ups about this multiple times and they always gave me the same two answers: 'We can't be liable for someone getting sick from eating our old food' and 'We donate to Second Helpings once a year, so at least we try'

Potentially every 10 seconds. So you put the item in your cart at one price, and then discover it's a different price at checkout.
I hope shoppers start dumping a bunch of these back on the store, and they are forced to restock them. Would serve them right. It's the only thing that will impact it it: make it an expensive hassle for them.
- Note that those 10 seconds are really just the theoretical capability of the digital price tags. The same way you could replace the paper version once per second. Otherwise yes, shitty.
- Refrigerated or frozen items can't be restocked, there's no real way to tell how long they've been out of refridgeration. Hit em in the pocket books.
- some minimum-wage retail worker shouldn't be punished for the decisions of corporate. they have zero control over this, and their complaints will just be ignored by corporate anyway.
  
  I considered that, but the worker gets paid the same either way. Most of them really don't care. Restocking is no worse than ringing up a bunch of people and bagging.
  And I disagree that corporate won't notice. They track everything in detail. The POS system will record refused items.

This is probably a prelude to groceries getting Uber like surge pricing, and likely targeted pricing schemes too.

On one hand, this cuts down on paper/sticker waste and time spent making and printing new prices and such.
On the other, I don't like that they could just change the price whenever they feel like. Though others have said multiple states have laws against changing prices during the business day.
- Paper waste is really something that was overstated in the early 2000s. Yes paper is made from trees. But trees are renewable compared to the silicon and carbon consumed in these electronic tags. It's way more environmentally friendly to use paper.
- That would be my only concern. Like picking something up and have the price increase on my way to the register.
- Though others have said multiple states have laws against changing prices during the business day.
  Suddenly it makes a lot more sense why Walmart doesn't want to be open 24 hours a day...
  
  I mean, even if they went back to 24 hours, I'm sure it would still be able to change at a certain time, like midnight or something.
  But I get what you're saying.
- I find it hard to believe that the environmental impact of having a paper tag per shelf which gets replaced maybe once a week is worse than the impact of manufacturing, installing and powering one digital screen per shelf.

This is gonna suck for restockers when a lot of items get left at the cashier's because Walmarts ghouls decided to raise the price between shelf and checkout.

Buy groceries when the price is low.
Refund when the prices go up.
Profit!
- Receipts have a time stamp, so they'd have a record of the actual price you paid. If you paid in cash and didn't get a receipt, and if they make an exception for your return, they'd base it on when you said you bought it. You might be able to get one or two exceptions depending on who's working. With that said you'd better make a purchase of thousands of dollars and pay in cash to make sure to get at least a few dollars back for your efforts.

Just gonna squeeze every last drop out of you. Every. Last. Drop.
- Ope

I don't go to walmart anymore. I think I am just going to go back and see how much I can steal.
- Remember, if a company steals from you and the entire country on a regular basis, it's smart business. If you so much as steal food from them, you're a monster.
- Nah fuck that, first off fuck you for stealing and secondly, it is way worse for these shitheads to have stock sit around and go bad instead of marking it as a loss cuz stolen.
  
  We already got enough food going to waste
  
  you're right! time to smash cameras
  
  The article has a suit giddy with the thought of stealing from people by price gouging water in a heat wave, and you're over here not advocating to steal back from them? Yikes.

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.”
Rather than seeing an opportunity to use surge pricing, Gallino says retailers are likely drawn to electronic shelf tags to ensure consistency between online and in-store pricing.
This person must live on another planet.
Sure, the prices won't be changing every six seconds, but anyone with half a mind can see these tags won't be used only when stock or expiry are a factor. The prices will be up on the weekend to start. Then later it'll be changing through the day to get higher prices between 4:00-7:00 when people are getting off work.
The arguments of no longer needing people to do yet another menial task and increasing utility of labels for consumers both have merit, but this alien even says the primary factor:
“The bottom line ... is the calculation of the amount of labor that they’re going to save by incorporating this."

Wal-Mart shoppers! Chocolate chip cookies are on sale at $1 for the next 30 minutes.
Good luck!
- I mean this was a regular thing at K-Mart my entire childhood, and people loved it.
  
  "Attention, K-Mart shoppers!"

Don't worry, they will also be making it so you have to use their data mining apps that require unconscionable permissions just to see that they are changing prices every 10 seconds.

Three thirsty people walk out of the desert, one at a time, and walk up to a water salesman. The first has $1, the second has $10, and the third has $100. What should the salesman charge in order to maximize profit while keeping all the customers happy?
$1 sounds reasonable, if their are other water salesmen it would probably be the best price, but it leave a lot of money on the table.
$10 sounds good, since 2/3s of the customers will get water and the saleman gets 600% more money.
$100 is the price that gets the most money, but leaves 2/3s thirsty and is way above what you should charge for water.
The answer, strangely, breaks the notion of "fair". Let us pretend that these three bottles of water are the only sale this salesman will ever make, quitting the business right afterwards. Also, let us say that none of the three will ever see the other two people's transactions. The answer then is to charge the first man $1, the second $10, and the third $100. Everyone gets water and the salesman gets the maximum amount of money. The problem is that we, subconsciously, feel that this is 'unfair' even though everyone got what they wanted. The ethical would set it at $1 while the businessmen would set it at $100 while trying to drive everyone else out of business. But what if the rich could be charged more than the poor? What if sales were based off of what each individual was willing to pay instead of which fixed price would garner the most profit?
Would this be a better world or a worse one?
- The answer then is to charge the first man $1, the second $10, and the third $100.
  Would the ethical answer not be $0, on the grounds that all individuals are entitled to basic living needs regardless of their personal wealth?
  
  For whatever reason people are always wandering out of this damn twilight zone desert, so you set up a filtered tap to offer for free, funded by bottle sales to the bougie bastards who'll pay $10 or $100 just to flex.
  
  Yes, that maximizes happiness at the expense profit, the polar opposite of setting it at $100 to maximize profit at the expense of happiness.
  
  Yeah that thought experiment is so capitalist-brained that the person doesn't even seem to understand your issue with the premise as a whole. That it's ridiculous to put so much consideration into thought experiments about maximizing profits while selling water in the desert.
  Then they respond to this as if you just gave a legitimate response to their thought experiment, and that you wouldn't be heckled by a room full of MBA students if you said what you just said in the marketing class the original commenter likely heard it.

I can't possibly shop there any less than I already do, but this is good to know.

So Walmart can easily raise the price while an item is in your shopping cart? Pick up a $6 bag of Cheetos and pay $8 at the self serve checkout.

I hope this means that there won’t be any more junk mail bullshit adverts in my mailbox trying to get me to go to their stores- since they’ll change prices on a whim- there’s no need for them any more.
- Hahaha unlikely

So this is being sold a certain way, as a tech advancement that takes advantage of "surge" pricing, as if retailers are adopting the latest tech and profitability schemes. And in fact, wrt a huge company like Walmart that operates on wafer-thin margins scaled up to mass consumption quantities, I don't doubt this will have some effect.
But the fact is, these chains already had extremely dynamic pricing schemes, and would change many prices daily or at least weekly; its just they had employees walking around who manually scanned the items and replaced the labels. When I worked at a box retailer we had 3-5 people where this was their only job. And i didnt work at a place with half as many skus as walmart. So the real savings is in the value of the labor the company will cut from implementing these smart shelf labels.
The initial investment will seem quite high, but businesses split up their capital investments over 10-30 years. So despite the hype, and even the predatory valance on the philosophy of the tech itself, in fact this technology, just like most technical advancement, is to automate the tasks of workers and eliminate their jobs. Profit is made from stealing from workers.
- a huge company like Walmart that operates on wafer-thin margins
  Walmart has historically run enormously wide margins, thanks to their "import shoddy crap from overseas" business strategy.
  
  They're vertically integrated so I doubt the stores themselves are making all of that profit. But you're right, they're very profitable as a company I was only thinking about the stores. especially since they handle every transaction from the moment its hits our shores to the moment it leaves the stores, accumulating little markups along the way as it's passed from legally separate business to business, the warehouses are a different company from the trucking and logistics, as well as the stores; all owned by the parent co. But the store's profits probably aren't much higher percentage than any other box retailer or grocery store.

Alright, so I quite literally haven't stepped foot into Walmart since June of 2015. The only money I've given them since was for two grocery pick-ups during early COVID when it was in a 5% cashback category on my CC. I have no idea of what changes have been made in the physical stores since then, and this sounds ... Horrifying. What happens if the price changes before you check out? I would feel duped. Are they going to make you "check in" when you enter so they can give you the price at time of entry? Or are you SOL if you don't make it to the cash register in time? And wouldn't that extra rush to get out make them lose money on stuff you pick up wandering around? Or maybe they want you in and out as fast as possible. What a clusterfuck.
I do love telling people about my Walmart-less living when it suits the conversation, and 90% of the time they are shocked, absolutely flabbergasted. "How can you do that?! Where do you get all of your stuff?!?" Well, like many middling American cities home to at least 20,000 people, there is a Target, Walgreens, a regional grocery store, Maurices, and for some reason like 12 auto parts stores right down the street. I can't recall anything in Walmart, aside from exclusive clothing brands (if you can call them that), that I haven't found elsewhere in at least some quantity-per-package. I get that people want a one-and-done shopping experience, but besides my routine Aldi stops, I don't shop that much anymore, even online.
My reasons? I would like to say that I am boycotting them for paying shit wages, being viciously anti-union, and all the other ethical shortcomings that never seem to improve. And that definitely is a part of it. But the main reason, the one setting me on my path toward Walmart Recovery (I should start up a Wal-Anon) was from the experience I had the night I needed to buy a broom, my last night or day in that store.
It was somewhere between 11 and 1 am (definitely after 11) and I had just moved house into a... House. (I was in an apartment previously.) The place needed a serious cleaning, and I simply did not have the correct broom for the job. Picked out the broom and a few other cleaning things, all was well. But shortly before checking out, a group of rowdy youngsters in their late teens sidled by me, laughing about something while also eyeballing my cart with the broom and other boring household accoutrements. I was but 23. I guess I hadn't shaken the adolescent anxiety of feeling judged about appearances and actions at that point, but the thought that these slightly younger peers were making fun of my broom shopping was too much to bear.
"Oh my gawd, who buys a broom on a Friday night?? Get a life, ya loser."
"I did. I did get a life! I'm moving on up, removed! I went from a 500 sqft apartment to an 800 sqft house with fuckin windows on all sides! I can put plants in every room, every nook and tiny-ass cranny! And I can bring my cat! And if that damn house of mine needs a broom at midnight, then my gods, I am going to go out and fucking GET ONE."
Anyway, that's my story about how I broke up with Walmart. DM me for requests to join Wal-Anon, we have plenty of seats for everybody! (The room will be free of any and all Mainstays furnishings and the coffee will be served sans Great Value cups, I assure you.)

Whole Foods and Best Buy have done this for years. It allows centralized control of sale pricing without having to print and post new signage at every location.
- IMO the tech itself is fine, but using it to gouge people based on weather and such is not.
- Aldi has been doing it forever. But it doesn't change based on surge pricing. What an evil idea...
  
  Aldi has been doing it forever
  That's because most supermarkets in Europe have had these systems for about 15 years. As usual, the yanks are a decade behind and find a way to use it for greed :(

I never imagined there's be a fucking Happy Hour at goddamn Wal-Mart.
- Never been in a supermarket when they put the reduced price stickers out?
  Turns all our local pensioners from Night of the Living Dead to 28 Days Later.

If goods get more volatile in price maybe crypto could actually be useful for commerce. "This box of pasta went up 30% before I got to checkout, but Bitcoin is up 50% in the same time frame so it's okay."
- So that's what people think crypto is like.
- Now imagine if that bitcoin went down 50% in the same time frame.

I can't even go to Walmart no more without running into people I know. Back in the day I never did myself up before going to Walmart because I never saw anybody there that I have acquaintance with. Now everybody is shopping there and I feel like I have to get dressed up or I don't fit in. Sometimes even put on lipstick and you know how the prices on that has gone up. I'm on a fixed income and the best shade that compliments my skin tone but doesn't break me out costs almost $10 when it was $6.99 before COVID.
- Is this copypasta or have we just witnessed the birth of a new one?
  
  Gods, I hope it's the latter!
- Now everybody is shopping there and I feel like I have to get dressed up or I don’t fit in.
  Said nobody ever in regards to Walmart.
- Okay...

I'm sure there'll be:
a lawsuit
local news coverage
a statement from some high up congressperson
a statement from the president "come on!"
a lengthy and expensive congressional investigation with the heads of the big three food stores where they'll ask them if they know how facebook works
a convoluted bill passed that is based on the rolling average price creep over x consecutive hours that's so confusing everyone just gives up and pays the surge price or starves as America tries as hard as possible to third-world our ass until Putin's Russia (or North Korea or whatever) looks like the Promised Land by comparison (Reverse Babylon AD?)

We were discussing this devices at university back in 2005. Too expensive at the time.

140 comments