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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.
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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.
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, bitches! 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 :(
If it’s hot outside we can raise the price of water…”
Holy fuck dude that’s some endgame capitalism right there.
Water is free/cheap though. They have a water fountain. You have plumbing into your living space with a virtually limitless supply.
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?
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.
name checks out
One dose of capitalism please.
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.
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?
Also if you live in, say, Flint, MI, you have reason not to trust the tap water.
The next town over from me, if you wash a white shirt in the washing machine it comes out with a tint of brown. We drink bottled water.
I supposed it depends on the country, but as far as I know in most of Europe you can just enter a coffee shop or the local equivalent and ask for a glass of tap water.
Mind you, even though I bought a metal water bottle years ago and almost never buy bottled water nowadays, as you say sometimes it happens that one needs, though its rare and it’s highly unlikely I would be going to a supermarket to buy water.
oh, Europe, yeah that makes sense. see I live in bumfuck America where they’ll tell you to get fucked and then shoot your kid
It’s the rollercoaster tycoon umbrella strat all over again
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We were discussing this devices at university back in 2005. Too expensive at the time.
I can’t possibly shop there any less than I already do, but this is good to know.
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.
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.
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.
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
Except it happens everyday and has been for at least a decade.
Sure realpage is getting sued… Will i ever get any of that money back?
To ask is to answer ;)
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.
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
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.
This is probably a prelude to groceries getting Uber like surge pricing, and likely targeted pricing schemes too.
Just gonna squeeze every last drop out of you. Every. Last. Drop.
Ope
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
