Walmart is rolling out digital shelf labels and expects it to be in all U.S. stores by year’s end. Is it surge pricing in disguise or just new tech efficiency?

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.

  • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
    231·
    2 days ago

    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.

    • SpacetimeMachine@lemmy.world
      41·
      19 hours ago

      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.

      • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
        3·
        18 hours ago

        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.