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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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.)
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.
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.
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.
as a retail employee myself, i assure you that standing still and pushing buttons would be preferable to all of the added work that comes with restocking something.
and i said corporate would ignore their complaints, not that they wouldn’t notice them.
They won’t ignore the metrics. They obsess over them, so the larger point stands. My brother consults with Wal Mart and Kroger, I know what I’m talking about.
I have worked multiple minimum wage jobs. I have friends who worked in grocery stores. I’m not talking from no experience.
You’re really stretching to win an internet argument here, when we’re basically on the same side (I assume)…which is price gouging customers is bad.
corporate pays attention to one metric: profit line go up or go down. walmart is famous for not giving a damn about their employees.
You’re really stretching to win an internet argument here
lol, no. i’m here to have a nice discussion. i’m not having an argument, certainly not one i feel needs “winning”. if you’re going to get hostile over nothing, then i’m done here.
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.
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."
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.
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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
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!”
I can’t possibly shop there any less than I already do, but this is good to know.
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.
That would be my only concern. Like picking something up and have the price increase on my way to the register.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, that maximizes happiness at the expense profit, the polar opposite of setting it at $100 to maximize profit at the expense of happiness.
- 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.
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.
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
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