Key Points
Walmart is rolling out digital shelf labels and expects the technology to be in all U.S. stores by year’s end. Kroger also has begun experimenting with the technology.
The nation’s largest retailer says the digital price tags help associates do their jobs better and stresses that prices on items will be exactly the same for every consumer in every store.
Some legislators are wary of the technology’s potential to be used in dynamic pricing models that disadvantage consumers, with Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) introducing a bill to ban it.
It makes good business sense to do this, especially in a huge store like Walmart, with thousands of SKUs. It will be faster and more accurate, and you might even get to fire a few people. That’s always fun.
The problem is that Walmart does everything in bad faith, so you just know they are going to use it for surge pricing. Get ready to see things like beer prices going up on the weekends.
Yup, next to no chance this doesn’t get used to set flux pricing unless we make laws to counteract it. Businesses have shown us repeatedly they only have the ethics we force on them.
i don’t patronize them any more. one of several… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXmnBbUjsPs "The film exposes Wal-Mart’s unscrupulous business practices through interviews with former employees, small business owners, and footage of Walmart executives. "
Pros: I heard on the Hackaday podcast where these discarded digital price things were (somewhat simply?) hacked to make fun hacker convention badges. So that’s neat. :D
2 inch networked e ink looking signage?
I want to play with a couple.
Found the article if you’re interested! :D
This kind of stuff is inevitable with capitalism, in their continuing effort to make human workers obsolete and save money it makes perfect sense to replace static paper displays with digital ones. I would assume the only reason they didn’t do it any soon is the up front costs.
Dynamic pricing is of course a real concern, but its not like you can’t do dynamic pricing with paper labels, it just takes more effort (and so the prices will probably reflect that as they change). It’s neat how we call it “dynamic pricing” now. but like when it happens in other places its called Hyperinflation, are there still some people foolish enough to think “dynamic” means it could go down also?
…what? How would dynamic pricing be done with paper labels? Have someone stand there, and switch out labels as new people approach?
Does anyone who has been to a store where something like this has been implemented know if this is at least likely to help with accessibility such as say a button to make it read the price labels, maybe larger font options and or a QR code to scan or various other options like that etc?
I know this would likely vary by manufacturer of these digital price labels. But if they are going to be switching to them I would hope that at least a side benefit would be increased accessibility for customers with disabilities.
I did see a post on reddit talking about how the OP actually found them harder to read but that obviously depends on the person.
I saw something about how there will be an LED light that will light up to help store employees find items faster for tasks such as online ordering. I wonder if this will be something customers can use too?
I know Walmart recently launched free Aira access using a geofence. It is a visual interpreting service which uses your phones camera so that someone can help you shop if you have a visual disability. But it would be nice if these digital price tags had some extra options too for people who don’t want to download that app or maybe cannot very easily because they have a phone such as a GNU/Linux phone where idk what the status is of Android compatibility layers or maybe even a dumbphone if they are someone who prefers that or are older for example.
It would just be nice if we at least got an accessibility benefit out of these digital tags too.
We have had them for a while and honestly they are harder to read. If they are like what we have which is like a mini kindle, darker grey font on a light grey background. So if you arent looking at the correct abgle they are harder to read. In the beginning in supermarkets if something was on special they would reduce the font to put the extra information on it such as normal price and savibg etc. They thankfully now have different colour borders or paper tags for specials making them easier to see. If they were twice the size I would be happier.
People love blaming grocery stores for the price of goods, while ignoring the QE and 8% annual money supply growth that is actually debasing their salary.
Walmarts margins are ass, its a boomer consumer staple investment with a low volatility that can withstand a recession, its not Google with its 33% profit margin.
If we had limited money supply growth your employer would need to cut your salary every year for your cost of living adjustment, and you’d see your purchasing power automatically rising every year.
Yeah, about that… https://youtu.be/odhVF_xLIQA
Oh Jesus, that was a pretty good watch.
TL;DW
Pepsi was caught price fixing for Walmart, specifically to make sure that no other store in the geographic area of a Walmart could buy Pepsi at a price where they could match Walmart.
Sure, they had to cheat just to eek out this margin:
Profitability:
Profit Margin 3.07%
Operating Margin (ttm) 4.57%
My point isn’t that Walmart isn’t a scumbag, just that prices won’t fall appreciably even if we did something about it. What’s debasing peoples standard of living is money supply growth, via QE largely.
Walmarts margins are ass,
It’s literally a trillion-dollar company.
Why do you deep-throat capitalism so?
There are far more trillions in bonds, doesn’t make them high yield investments. Its reality, their margins are less than 4%, so how much can prices fall?
Oh no, not less than 4%, that makes it all alright, because economies of scale for a trillion-dollar company definitely don’t make 4% a figure anyone could even think about protesting against.
Nooo, Walmart is practically socialist, because the profit margins are single percentages. That’s definitely how this works.
Well if you think its Walmart making people poor you’re mistaken I would say, its QE that really erodes your paycheck. The CPI then does hedonic adjustments and substitutions to mismeasure real inflation to make it seem like you’re not getting poorer.
They’re not the only one to blame, no.
The system is propped up by everyone simultaneously. Especially when there’s people like you defending giant corporations like Walmart.
Also I’m not American
If the money supply grows at 8% a year and productivity barely rises that’s just raw debasement in my view, and complaining about an unchanging <4% margin of a consumer staple mainly owner by retired boomers is silly IMO.
According to research everyone should be buying levered positions and staying 100% global equities for life, as an inflation hedge is so important in the casino we call a global economy.
Because that’s how economies of scale work; you say a bigger number happens in another process, which implies that 4% profits are actually 4% socialist.
#/S
Man, I really didn’t think you were going for the “Walmart is actually socialist” - bit, I thought it’s beyond exaggerated comedy for me to even suggest you’d be dumb enough to argue that… yet here we are. Lol.
You’re comparing two completely different things; profitability per dollar vs. absolute growth of business.
Anything new in a Walmart is destroyed or disorganized within a day of its installation. It’s already impossible to find anything on the right shelf, and the jaded underpaid employees won’t do shit to fix it. Walmart is basically a junkyard with a roof.
Don’t put that on the employees, get your “nobody wants to work anymore” attitude out of here.
Methinks thou doth project too much. Walmart is a shitty org who treats their employees like shit. I wouldn’t give a shit either if I had to work there.
Meh I knew someone who got a job there a couple years ago and they said they were enjoying it at the time. It may vary by area. I’ve certainly never had the issues you were discussing of not finding things where they were supposed to be or everything being a mess. I remember Kmart being that sloppy in the 90s sometimes though.
Dynamic pricing is not legal in Canada, but what our Real Canadian Super Store does on some items is set the price super high, then every day you go in it is a different “sale” price. On a specific soymilk the price ranges from 3.50 to 9.00.
Insidious. Damn.
sounds like the same thing, but with extra steps.
A workaround the law
It would be a shame if anyone went around the shelves with a car window breaker surreptitiously tapping on all of the price tags.
I’ve been doing dynamic pricing in Walmart for years. I go in ready to pay for stuff but end up walking out with meat in my pants. The prices become free while I’m in the store
Hot take but I don’t see a problem with this… It’s no different than paper labels being swapped out daily by employees or whatever.
A much bigger issue would be conditional pricing, as in, the price for an object is different for one person than another person.
That’s exactly why it’s different than swapping out labels daily.
Walmart employees can’t change prices fast enough with physical labels. With digital labels the time to change prices drops to zero and now Walmart prices can change instantly hundreds of times a day.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: People WILL CATCH if they do this. Let someone THINK it happened and thousands of people will start taking pics of the prices on the shelves and compare to prices on checkout.
It is extremely unlikely that they would try it. But even if they did, it is extremely unlikely they would get away with it for more than a day or two.
I’m not sure why you think this is a conspiracy theory, it’s already documented as happening and is common in some segments. It’s not a secret.
Uber led the way on this years and years ago, with systems that would offer every driver a unique price for each ride based on their recent history. If you took every ride that came up you would get lower prices, but if you started declining rides you would get an increased rate to bait you back in… until you bit and took one where it would decrease the rate again.
Each driver being offered a different fare for the same customer is the kind of dynamic pricing that digital displays offer for grocery stores. Maybe at the busiest time of day prices are suddenly more expensive. Maybe when it’s hot outside cold drinks go up 20%. Maybe you don’t notice because you’re too busy thinking about all the other stress of daily life.
it’s already documented as happening
Oh? Where are the pictures comparing pricing on shelves vs. checkout pricing?
Oh, you’re bringing other things into this that have nothing to do with the subject at hand?
Sorry, we were discussing pricing tags on grocery store shelves. Please try to keep up.
That’s an impressively shortsighted and silly argument for someone trying so hard to sound smart.
Aww you’re cute.
Only not really.
Stopped shopping at Walmart 10 years ago and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Literally have no other option where I live other than Dollar General. Unless I want a 2 hour commute.
I completely understand the retailer’s desire for electronic shelf tags, and it doesn’t have to be nefarious of the store taking advantage of customers.
Way back in my youth when I worked retail, keeping shelf tags up-to-date was multiple-peoples full time jobs. This is was for a whole bunch of reasons.
The obvious:
- prices go up
- prices go down
The not so obvious:
- new products come in that don’t have an existing tag so one needs to be created
- products are out-of-stock and will not be replenished, so someone has to go to that shelf and pull that tag off
- promotions have some stock moved from its normal shelf location to an end cap or otherwise special display in a store so more tags needed for the same amount of product
- shelf space being utilized differently such as more product being oriented vertically where before it was horizontal so more tags needed for the same product
- patrons steal shelf tags (who knows why), but it means a new tag must be printed and deployed to the shelf
What’s more, if a shelf tag isn’t updated and the price rings up higher at the register, many retailers will honor the shelf tag listed price so there is a financial loss to the store from poorly maintained shelf tags. I am not surprised at all that it is cheaper for the retailer to buy and implement an entire electronic shelf tag solution over paper tags and labor.
There is legal obligation to honor the shelf tag if it says a product should be lower than what it rang up for. Otherwise it’s essentially a bait and switch, and can usually get a store in trouble if a customer complains to the right people.
There is legal obligation to honor the shelf tag if it says a product should be lower than what it rang up for.
At the federal level (in the USA at least), there isn’t. Some states might, no law covering the entire nation.
Otherwise it’s essentially a bait and switch, and can usually get a store in trouble if a customer complains to the right people.
The legal barrier for “bait and switch” is higher than that. Bait and switch is if the price is intentionally lowered and advertised, then raised or not offered when the customer tries to buy. If a customer took one of these “expired shelf tag” situations to court, the retailer could easily point to their sale promo from the week before showing the price was valid at that time, but that the old shelf tag hadn’t been properly taken down. The retailer would win, but the retailer knows this too and the cost of legal representation, bad press, and losing a customer usually isn’t worth winning the legal argument, so they usually just honor the mistakenly lower price and move on.
Stores are going to be aisles of vending machines where you pay as you go soon.
Dynamic pricing is only part of it. When you are anticipating higher persistent inflation this makes it easier to tick prices up daily. Enjoy your Trump cost of living adjustments! Lol.
